Friendly's

3: The number of days in my weekend (yay!)

Happy Halloween!

I'm at Miami Hamilton right now for my first tax training. All the counselors-to-be are working on their second scenario. I'm feeling pretty good. It's going really well. I found a great way to avoid questions I don't have answers to. I let everyone know that no one expects them to be tax experts and that there are reference pages in the backs of their books. I also gave everyone a slip of paper in their folders that had the link to the "Link and Learn" that we had to complete before going to tax training in Columbus. I think having all of those extra places to go for help eased everyone's minds. So going through the Tax and FAFSA guide was pretty smooth.

I'm so glad it's almost the weekend, and that I took Monday off. I so need to sleep in.

I did promise to blog about it if something interesting happened during my training in Troy Wednesday, so here it is:

I don't know my way around Troy at all, so when it was time for lunch I searched for "restaurants" in my GPS and guess what popped up?

FRIENDLY'S!!

I used to go to this place all the time when I was a kid, until they closed all of them in the Cincinnati area. For those who have never had the pleasure of dining at Friendly's, they have your typical burgers and chicken fingers, and the most incredible Reeses Cup peanut butter sundaes in the world.

I hadn't been to a Friendly's since I visited my brother in Albany, New York last summer. So I sped on over and got chicken tenders and my sundae. Of course the fingers filled me up too much, and I wasn't even able to finish the ice cream. They give you a lot. But it was so worth it.

Next time I have a training in Troy, I may just get the sundae. And I don't care if you judge me.

To find a Friendly's near you, click here!

Long drives and pretty roads

12: The number of hours I worked yesterday.

Long. That's the only word I can come up with for my road trip to Portsmouth yesterday.

I left my house at 6 a.m., equipped with two tote bags stuffed with benefit and software guides, my laptop, and two bottles of water. I set the address in Rita, my trusty GPS, and set off.

I think I would have enjoyed the drive more if the sun were up. Once it did rise, the scenery was absolutely gorgeous. It's a great time for a drive down a country road--the pretty leaves will be gone in a matter of weeks. Take the time to enjoy Autumn!

Anyway, it took almost two and a half hours to get to the training site, and I had plenty of time to set up. We only had two people missing, and they had called in ahead of time to say they couldn't make it.

The five people who were there were great. All very respectful and excited about the program. We went through the training without a hitch. (Well, there are always a few hiccups. I don't know why, but whenever people hear the phrase "WRITE DOWN YOUR PASSWORD--YOU WILL NEED IT LATER!" they go temporarily deaf. One of life's greatest mysteries).

After the training I put my home address into Rita, who turned out to be not so trusty in Portsmouth. She kept telling me to turn onto streets that were not actually there. Then she made me drive around in a circle a few times. I was getting really frustrated, so I eventually just found a highway and started driving. Unfortunately, this meant taking the long way home. Rita finally got her act together and I had to take windy, curvy, back roads for like an hour and a half before I found 32. The good news: Another pretty drive. I might have stopped the car for pictures if it weren't raining. The bad news: I just wanted to go home and put my jammies on. But I got home at about 6:00 and all was well.

Right now I'm at a training in Troy. It's going well so far, but if anything exciting happens you know I'll update.

Tomorrow is my day off, and by that I mean I don't have a training to do and will just go to Shared Harvest. I have my first tax training on Friday, then it will be the glorious weekend. I have already told Meredith that I need to use some of my growing comp time on Monday. It is high time for a vacay.

A crazy, busy, exhausting week

3: The number of trainings I have to do this week.

This week is going to be insane.

Right now I'm at Warren County United Way, waiting for someone to call me back about a success story. Even though it's my last day here, I am going to have to leave a couple of hours early to go to Shared Harvest.

My supervisor, Meredith, called me about an hour ago.

"Hey, Alex, it's Meredith."

"Oh, hi!"

"Um... are you feeling alright?"

"Yes....why?

"Oh, thank God."

It turns out that my fellow VISTA, Michelle, is really sick and will be most likely be unable to make it to her training tomorrow. Because of various circumstances with the other VISTAs in this region, I am pretty much the only one who was going to be able to make it to this training. I'm leaving United Way early today so I can go back to Shared Harvest and pick up some supplies for tomorrow (and Wednesday!). So tomorrow I'll be driving out to Portsmouth for another benefits training.

...Did I mention that Portsmouth is a 2 hour and 15 minute drive?

Hooray for comp time and expenses!

I have another training on Wednesday in Troy, again for benefits, and my first tax training in Dayton on Friday. So my week just got a little more interesting!

I just have to power through. Just keep swimming, and all that motivational stuff.

In other news, I went to the Lighthouse Food Pantry in Hamilton on Saturday for Make a Difference Day. Everyone was really friendly and literally welcomed me with open arms. My job was to make sure certain items, like breads, sweets and cheeses, were fully stocked as more and more people came in for their monthly shopping trip. I was also in charge of flattening boxes, which I didn't mind doing at all. There's something oddly satisfying about ripping apart cardboard. My hands got pretty dry, but I did okay.

I was supposed to stay there from 9:30-12:30, but I ended up staying a little longer because it was a lot busier than they had anticipated. They kept me moving the whole time I was there, so it passed by pretty quickly.

Social note: I saw "Paranormal Activity" on Friday. I haven't had a good night's sleep since Thursday night.

Back from C-Bus

7: The number of hours until the weekend.

I have returned from my overnighter in Columbus, and really, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. We actually had a lot of downtime that we were able to spend catching up with the other VISTAs, and it's always nice to share stories with people who are in the same boat as you.

The taxes themselves...well let's just say I'm not a fan of doing taxes by hand. I may actually strive to maintain a job that will keep my household income less than $56,000 a year so I can just use The Benefit Bank forever.

It wasn't really difficult to do the taxes by hand, but it was frustrating. It didn't take long for the people at my table to create a mess of pencils, tax reference packets and calculators. Check out that clutter.

The only really frustrating part of it was not having a lot of room to work. And occasionally not understanding what a particular question was asking for. The tax manual that was given to us was about 100 pages, (see Kaitlyn holding it up with a look of amusing frustration) and we often struggled to find the answers we needed to fill out the 1040. The worst part was when we only had a few questions left and we'd get stuck on line 67b or whatever, and have to spend fifteen minutes figuring out a single question. Very frustrating. But the next day we were able to practice with the Benefit Bank software. We finished two scenarios in the time it took us to fill out one tax form by hand. Much better.

Kaitlyn is hard at work!

I am already nervous about my first tax training, even though I don't have one until October 30.

Wait...that's just next week.

...Crap.

P.S. Sorry about the spacing on this blog. I tried to figure out how to fix it, but all Blogger had to say about it was, "Yeah...kind of sucks, doesn't it?"

Leaving on a Ford Taurus

105.48: The number of miles from my house to downtown Columbus

This post is mostly just an FYI. Tomorrow I'm off to Columbus for Community Trainer Tax Training. It's another over-nighter so I won't be posting until Friday at the earliest.

It's also known as "Train the Trainer." We're being trained to train people to use the Benefit Bank for taxes. Did I get that right? Here's our schedule:

WEDNESDAY, October 21
9:30 a.m. -- Arrival and continental breakfast
10-Noon -- Reviewing the Tax Guide
Noon-1 -- Lunch and tax season overview
1-5 -- Taxes by hand, Janis Hayes scenario WAIT, taxes by hand?! I promise--I PROMISE--I understand how wonderfully easy-to-use the Benefit Bank is. If something requires a calculator, I can say with complete confidence that I am going to screw up.

THURSDAY, October 22
8:30 a.m. -- Continental breakfast I may pretend this says 8:45.
9-noon -- Software practice -- Plena and Hayes Family Scenarios I just might strain my eyes from all this computer practice.
Noon-1 -- Lunch I can already tell you what this is going to be. Cold cut sandwiches, bowl of fruit, assorted chips, cookies. They do treat us well! We can't go to an event without getting free food. But I digress.
1-3 -- Software practice -- Advanced scenario Wait, advanced scenario? What does that mean?
3-4 -- Final Questions

So that's where I'll be for the next few days.

Right now I'm at Warren County United Way. Today someone sent in an e-mail with a success story idea. There's this little boy in the second grade named Brenden who saw a program about charitable work, focusing on the homeless, and he was so affected by it that he told his parents he wanted to donate blankets and do whatever he could to help. So he's volunteering at the Interfaith Hospitality Network of Warren County right now and starting up food and clothing drives.

The woman at Interfaith is going to contact the family to make sure it's OK for me to interview them, and I'll give them a call next week.

My heart pretty much melted when I heard this story. What a sweet kid. If only everyone were a little more like Brenden.

Things that go bump on the road

11: The number of years Shared Harvest has owned Gus the Bus.

Today I got to use my skills as a certified Benefit Bank counselor! A woman came into Shared Harvest wanting to apply for HEAP, and I wasn't too busy so she came back to our office and I went through the application with her. The good news is that she had already used the Benefit Bank before, so a lot of her information was already in the system and it only took about 20 minutes. Still, it was nice to be able to do a little direct service. My counselor certification on the bulletin board isn't just there for decoration (though it does make me feel rather important).

Kaitlyn and I took Gus the Bus out for another spin today. There was a little confusion at first about where we needed to go, because people have been extending their food drive or already had their barrels picked up, etc. But we eventually figured out that we had to drop off two barrels and posters to a place called Siemens in Mason, and drop off two barrels and posters at Indiana Wesleyan University in West Chester. Kaitlyn was going to drive first this time, then we'd do the traditional "rock paper scissors" to see who had to drive to our next destination (I lost this time), and I would drive home. Once we loaded all of our supplies and clamored into the truck, Kaitlyn began to carefully back out of the parking spot, only to be greeted with an unfamiliar noise that sounded a little something like this:

"GGGHHARRRRRRRRNNNNNNNGGGHH."

We looked at each other with identical masks of horror before I peeked out the window and discovered that Kaitlyn had had a little run-in with the picnic table for the warehouse employees. (See below)

I quickly got out of the truck and surveyed the damage. When it was clear that both Gus and the picnic table were still in perfect condition, we let the giggles take over for a few minutes before I dragged the table to a safer location. We backed up the truck again, heard this noise (Gnnnnghghghg), turned off the emergency brake, and finally made it out of Shared Harvest.

Other than that minor glitch, the deliveries went just fine. We're getting pretty good at this.

Something exciting you may have read on Kaitlyn's blog is that today Jason DeParle, a reporter from The New York Times, is checking out Shared Harvest. He's doing a series on food stamps, and because Tina started the first food stamp outreach program in the country, this is a pretty good place for him to be. I'm pretty sure he's looking at how Shared Harvest's outreach program and the Ohio Benefit Bank increase access to food stamps. He also seems interested in our roles as AmeriCorps*VISTAS, so he asked Kaitlyn and me if he could put a link to our blogs on the Times' Web site.

Hmm...yes. Yes, you may.

So it has been pretty intense around here! Tina is organizing a dinner tonight for Jason and the people of Shared Harvest. She said to feel free to bring significant others, so my boyfriend Kyle is driving up as well. We're all pretty excited. Stay tuned for a posting about that!

3 more very important things to mention:

1. TINA TURNED THE HEAT ON TODAY! (Although she turned it right back off as soon as the church ladies left).

2. I can't seem to stop eating these Mellowcreme Pumpkins.

3. Look for Gus TheBus on Facebook!

The Holiday Basket Project

63: The guess-timated number of applicants for Holiday Baskets I saw yesterday.

Part of my VAD (Vista Assignment Description) is for me to work on the Holiday Basket Project, which basically recruits volunteers to put together baskets of food for low-income families for Thanksgiving and Christmas, as well as toys and other gifts for the holiday season. I had just been attending meetings every two weeks, and making my cell number available to the organizations who are involved in the project. A few weeks ago, though, Family Services of Middletown sent me an e-mail asking if I would be willing to go down there and help people register for baskets of food and gifts. So yesterday I drove the half hour to Middletown, having no clue what to expect.

As soon as I walked in the building I knew it would be a busy day. It was packed with people who had wandered in and wanted to register. It took me longer than necessary to walk the twenty or so feet to the back of the building, where I met with Connie, who was helping to organize the project. She handed me a sheet of paper, said "These people came in on Tuesday and might come back today with their missing paperwork. Make sure they have this, this, this and this, thanks so much for the help, sit right here!" and was ushered away by more people with more questions.

I was overwhelmed at first, ("Wait, so ...if there...should I...wha?") but I got the hang of it quickly enough. People started streaming in with missing paperwork, and I was soon given the responsibility of helping new clients fill in whole new applications (I guess you could call them applications).

It was kind of a downer day, though. Apparently some people have taken advantage of the program in the past, or are asking for assistance from several organizations, so they have to make sure that the people coming in for help really do need the help. So I had to ask for documentation for just about everything: Birth certificates for everyone in the household, food stamp verification, leasing agreements, utility bills, pay stubs. And if they were missing documents, I was supposed to send them away and ask them to come back. Which meant having them go home, rummage around for these documents, come back and wait in line all over again. I could only imagine the frustration that they had to go through. And all they were asking for was a basket of food for their family for the holidays.

I just do not like the fact that it is still so hard for some people to get assistance. Hopefully that will change.

Leave a message at the beep!

18: The number of sites who still need to sign up for Pre-Training Orientation or turn in their Site User Agreement.

I don't really have a lot to report today, but I haven't updated my blog in a long time, so I feel like this is necessary.

Yesterday was my first ever solo training. And while I was a little anxious about it, I was also excited to lead a class all by myself. The training was at the Wesley Center in Dayton, which is about an hour drive. I had already been there for a training, so at least I had a faint idea of where I was going.

And it went well. It really did. Everyone understood the program, they asked smart questions and were respectful. We did have a few issues with the computers, but none of them completely crashed, at least. Six people were scheduled to show up, and for the first time I had a training with perfect attendance! I was so proud of everyone. Everyone finished up pretty early and I got home at about 4:20.

I have spent most of today making phone calls. We have folders upon folders of organizations that would like to be benefit bank sites, but haven't yet completed PTO (Pre-Training Orientation) or turned in their SUA (Site User Agreement). The sad thing is that I called like 20 different places and wasn't able to sign up a single site for PTO. I mostly got voicemails. And one place said they were no longer interested in becoming a site. But at least we got an answer out of them.

It's still pretty early in the day, though, so I might take some time to call potential food drive sites. I only wish it weren't so cold in here. Two of the walls in this office are just windows, so there's not a lot of insulation. I am wearing a t-shirt, a hoodie, and my winter coat. But my fingers are slowly becoming numb.

The Adventures of Gus the Bus: The Missing Cintas Distribution Center

6: The number of buildings on Cintas Blvd.

What a beautiful, albeit rainy, day for a barrel drop-off with Gus the Bus!

How do I describe yesterday... it definitely had its ups and downs. Early in the morning there was a HUGE spider in our little office, which is not what you want to find in a room with four ladies. Meredith, my supervisor, was able to identify it as a wolf spider. She was also able to smush it with her shoe. If she hadn't been in the office , I'm pretty sure Martha, Kaitlyn and I would still have our feet up on our office chairs.

But soon after that, Tina came into our office with some good news. Kaitlyn and I were each given our expense checks, which have been missing since August! So that was really exciting. We were both practically singing when we realized that everything was in the correct amount and all we had to do was go to the bank.

After that high wore off, it was time for Kaitlyn and me to take out Gus the Bus. We had to drive out to Mason to MedPlus and the Cintas Distribution center. We decided that I would drive Gus to MedPlus, we would "rock paper scissors" to see who had to drive to Cintas, and Kaitlyn would drive us back. I won, so I got to relax in the front seat while Kaitlyn unintentionally drove over a few curbs in the parking lot.

Things were going pretty smoothly. We got to MedPlus alright, and we found Cintas easily. Okay, that's not altogether true. We found the general area where Cintas was supposed to be. Our MapQuest directions told us to turn right on Cintas Blvd. and that the address we were looking for would be on the left. Well, there are several buildings on this street, all of which are labeled "CINTAS." So we maneuvered our way down each random driveway, hoping to find an address (which we didn't).

Where do we go?!

We had some time to kill anyway, because we were told that no one would be able to find us and the barrels between 12:30 and 1:00. So we parked Gus across four empty parking spaces, turned on the radio, had a little jam session in the truck and took some picturesque fall photos of our favorite van/truck/bus.

When one o'clock rolled around, we had some decisions to make. We were in the largest parking lot for the biggest building at the very end of the drive. So we drove around, making a tight circle around the building, until we found what looked like a main entrance. We went in and were told by the lady at the front desk to take the barrels "down by the docks."

"Down by the docks?"

"Yes, down by the docks."

"Do you have a dock number for us or something? There are like 20 docks."

"No, just head down there. Like, around the building."

"..."

When we got back to Gus, we called our contact person for Cintas, who told us to meet her by dock 16. Finally, a straight answer! Of course we hung up with her before we discovered that dock 16 was located behind a security gate. Fortunately, we were able to sit there speechless long enough that another truck came by, entered the code, and entered through the gate. So we just followed him in. I hope we didn't make anybody anxious with that.

So we finally made it to dock 16, and we unloaded the two barrels from the back and lugged them up the steps to the one door we saw. Someone was there to greet us and lead us halfway across the building to their cafeteria. (Well, it seemed like that far. It's hard to measure distance when you're carrying a huge barrel). We dropped off the barrels, and their posters for the barrels, and navigated our way out of there. We were able to tailgate another semi out of the fenced-in dock area, and we headed back to Shared Harvest.

We have decided that we will probably never be completely used to driving Gus the Bus. Every time I climb up to the driver's seat I start having heart palpitations. Still, it gets a little easier every day!

Technical Difficulties

26: The number of pennies in my change purse.

Today Kaitlyn and I had presentations in Montgomery and Greene counties. They were a little close together timewise, though, so to be safe Kaitlyn went to Montgomery at 8 a.m. and I headed out to Greene at 10:30.

Greene County is about an hour drive away, and I had never been out there before. Fortunately I had my GPS, Rita, with me, and I didn't get lost.

After an hour drive, consisting mostly of searching for a station that wasn't playing Miley Cyrus, I pulled into the Greene County Public Library. It was hard to find a place to park. I ended up parking on the street, which of course happened to be right next to the county jail, and which of course had a parking meter that only accepted quarters, of which I only had one.

I was only able to buy a half hour of parking time. So after I got all set up in the meeting room, I spoke with the librarian and exchanged two dimes and a nickel for another quarter. Unfortunately those were the only coins I had, aside from a handful of pennies, and I was just going to have to risk parking there for what was for sure going to be longer than 52 minutes.

So I headed back up to the meeting room and had someone come in to help me set up their projector, which I for some reason couldn't figure out for the life of me. And neither could they. They said that Acer computers for some reason always have trouble with their projector. I ended up putting my OBB presentation on a USB and transferring it over to one of their computers. At least it was working now.

By this point I was ten minutes behind schedule and two people had already shown up. So I went through the presentation, showed them the Quick Check program, answered their questions, etc. I hope they didn't notice the anxiety behind my voice. I wasn't nervous about presenting; I was nervous about getting a parking ticket.

The presentation took about an hour. When I finally had everything packed up I practically ran back to my car. The fates were with me -- my car was still there, not a single ticket in sight.

I decided to pull a Preble County and search around for more potential sites, but this day was not so successful. I couldn't find one of the places I wanted to check out, and I was only able to leave some information at the next one. It was raining, I was out of homemade business cards, and it looked like some of the places on my list required street parking (which required quarters, of which of course I had none). So I picked up some lunch and headed back to Shared Harvest.

It was a tiring day.

Spontaneous Walking Tour

0: The number of people who showed up to our Benefit Bank presentation in Preble County.

You read that correctly.

Kaitlyn and I have been giving presentations to our counties in the southwest region of Ohio. We sent out letters to other nonprofit sites that we hoped would want to become a Benefit Bank site, giving them a brief overview of the program. So far we haven't had much luck. So for Preble County, for which we only sent out 20 lettes, we followed up the letters with a phone call, reminding them of the presentation. We drove 45 minutes out there, got all set up, and waited 20 minutes before we decided no one was going to show up.

But we didn't drive all the way out there for nothing, so Kaitlyn looked up some of the sites we had invited, wrote down the addresses, and got back in the car. We figured if they weren't going to come to us, then we were going to go to them!

We weren't sure how people were going to react to us, so we were a little anxious at first. We didn't want people to think we were trying to sell them something, or carrying around the book of Mormon. But people were very receptive to us, all very polite, and our spontaneous drive around Preble County turned out to be pretty successful. No one had heard of the Benefit Bank before, and we got to sit down and talk with people at two organizations about it. They were really ecstatic about the program, which made us want to skip around the parking lot. (But we didn't).

We also learned that a lot of the information we have in our spreadsheets is no longer accurate. A few of the buildings we drove by looked completely vacant, so we may have to do some research to figure out where these agencies disappeared to.

We did a lot of walking, because a lot of the nonprofits were on the same street as one another. It was a pretty fun way to spend the day!