Yes, we are still at Mendocino. But it's only raining a LITTLE!

I think we can be considered “settled in” here at camp Mendocino; it’s been four days, we completed one of our tasks, and we’ve started griping about our dwindling food supply. We have an issue with food as a team. We have been getting by admirably without any sort of planning, figuring out what we want to cook for dinner as we shop each week at Trader Joe’s (I’m not sure how we got by shopping at Trader Joe’s, but it worked), and all for under $350 a week. However, regardless of how much or how little food we buy, we always go through four stages (the Silver Four Food Cycle):

1) Being excited about how much food we bought when we first get the food
2) Exclaiming at how fast we are going through food
3) Running out of one or more of the following: eggs, milk, or bread
4) Going shopping a day earlier than we had planned

Personally, I think our food consumption is directly related to the amount of food we have. Everyone just gets guilty about snacking when it looks like you’re probably eating the bread that someone is going to need for lunch on Friday.
Added to that little cycle is the fact that we run generators from 7-8:30 AM and 6-10:30 pm to power the heater for water and our rooms, the lights in the kitchen, and the TV in the lounge. Otherwise the buildings are rather cold and dark. We are still concerned for our milk and meats.

Oho. I recently had a slight dilemma. Because of the 3 rooms for 11 of us, one of my roommates is my team leader. He’s a shorter guy, but packed with more muscle and passion for life than one might think possible. He is the epitome of giving 100% to everything, and generally he lets nothing worry him. This week he has repeatedly been using my towel, to shower, to dry his face off, whatever, and this threw me for a loop.

Initially, I was pretty pissed, but I buy into the “ignore it-see if it goes away” confrontation strategy. The only thing that ever bothers me about him is that sometimes his carefree, unworried attitude leads to certain social faux paus (fox paws? Faw pow? I have no idea how to spell it). So then I wondered: why did him using my towel bother me? It’s not cause I think it’s unsanitary; I wouldn’t mind if a family member or good friend used my towel without asking. So I figure I was annoyed because he broke an ambiguous social rule put in place by the first whiny guy to say “dude. That’s MY towel.” Thus, since I ultimately approve of his ability to not worry about anything, assuming that it will be ok with others because he wouldn’t mind, I am now ok with the whole issue. With the exception of the fact that my towel reeks a bit. He’s a true backwoodsian, and has been said to be the child of a bear.

And that was the story of a towel. Obviously a disaster needs to happen so my blog can be EXCITING and PICKED UP BY A MAJOR PUBLISHER.

We did burn stuff today. We’ve been brushwacking the side of the inroad to the camp so the buses can see where they are going, and we are now burning the piles. Cool stuff. On a side note, they figured it would take us to Friday to finish the brushwacking. We finished today. No biggie, we just kick ass.

Well the main generator (on today so our team leader could get some paperwork in) is going back off soon, so the computers are gonna die. More next time on the Corps Life.