Once again, it’s been a crazy night and day. Yesterday I received a call about a situation before I was scheduled to be on-call, so I was able to arrive just before my shift started. It was a much smaller disaster, but way sadder. It gave me a bit more experience dealing with a difficult situation, though, and now I’ve seen everything I need to see in order to be “well-rounded” at this volunteer stuff.
After we returned back to HQ, we had some additional work to do, so the team leader and I hung out for the next 5 hours to round out our shifts. I’m normally an introverted/quiet person, but there’s something about these Red Cross volunteers that makes me talk nonstop like I’m on speed. By the end of 7 hours or so, my throat was raw. I still haven’t properly recovered from whatever plague I had last week, so I’m hoping this doesn’t make it worse.
While I spent a bajillion hours talking, I did let the team lead add a few words. He’s done some global deployments, and he said he thinks I’d be perfect for them. Actually, he gave me some really great ideas of things I could do full-time to help, thanks to my language background. I’d planned on going to the gym after we were done with the emergency situation, but after our conversation, I’m glad I stuck it out with him – you never know what might come from it!
We had some follow-up duties today, and I was cut loose on my own with a brand new volunteer. Apparently I’m experienced now, which is cool. I got to drive us to the location, and I got to take charge. It was kind of awesome.
After we got back, I had some time to kill before work, but not enough time that I could make it home and back… So I headed to the Strip District to grab a sandwich. Terrible idea to go to the Strip stone-cold sober on St. Patty’s Day Parade day, btw. For real, it was awful. But on my way back into the office, I saw a cell phone and some change on the steps near the office. I always seem to find random things like this, and I don’t know why. I’m like a magnet for them. Unsure what to do, I waited around for a few minutes and looked around in the area to see if someone was coming back for it, and then took it all inside when I realized there was no one else around. I sure hope whoever lost it is a Red Cross volunteer; otherwise someone is out of luck.
And now I’m sitting at work waiting to start my shift. I’m a little anxious about what might come tonight, being the St. Pat’s celebration day and all, but I guess we’ll just have to tough it out! At least I have about 18 more volunteer hours to look forward to this weekend! 🙂
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