Saturday, November 15, 2014

A Funeral, A Wedding, and an Eagle Project: The Past Month

So I haven't posted in a LONG while. Sorry.

On October 26th, 2014 I gained a guardian angel and lost one of my most dear relatives and friends when my paternal grandmother passed away. I will give this the proper post it deserves in a little while, just not now. But following that was a viewing, a funeral, and then reality.

I went to a wedding last weekend in Meadville. Or at least we stayed in Meadville. If you've ever been to the Cochranton/Meadville exit off of 79, you know that you have to go through a swamp in order to get there from points south. That's the kind of place Meadville is - kinda cool, yet kind of far removed from reality.

We were there for the daughter of my mother's best friend's wedding. It was a lovely ceremony, and lasted all of 15 minutes. I took somewhere near 100 pictures for a project my mother wanted to put together. I like photography without a set list of things to accomplish, but I am also realistic enough to know that when I'm given an assignment for this to go a step further than my computer that despite what the client (in this case my mother) says about having no agenda, they have an agenda. So I did my best to read minds and attempt to be everywhere and nowhere. We'll see how that goes.

On November 10th, I finished a project I had been working on for over a year: The Carlynton Sign Project. Mr. McAdoo signed off on it yesterday, so I feel safe saying that with the exception of some more paperwork I am done with this.

I crunched some numbers and realized that all told 35 people volunteered on the project contributing 120+ hours of community service to the school district. That's just time dedicated to working on the project, not the planning and scheming and phone calls. To say I was happy to see the project finished and to see people's reactions to it and to see that signature is a grotesque understatement.

So many people worked to make this thing a reality and I have lost so much sleep over it that I'm very happy to finally take a step back and think, wow, I did this thing. We were given a budget of $500 and accomplished what we came to do - rehab, replace, and landscape the Carlynton Sign. We put new capstone in, cleaned, painted, mounted banners to and landscaped around this thing and I think it's safe to say that it looks much better than it did.

You be the Judge:

So thanks again to everyone who had a hand in this project, from Mr. McAdoo and Mr. Loughren and the School Board to Jeff and Nick who randomly helped us clean the brick to any and all of the volunteers who took time out of their schedules to make this crazy idea a reality. 120+ hours. Nuts.