MTV Todd

So my phone rang last week... it was a number I didn't know and I didn't feel like answering it. But then I felt guilty so I called back...

A guy's voice answered, "Hello Juli."
"...hello?"
"This is Todd from MTV."
"Hello... Todd from MTV..."
"How are you doing?"
"Fine."
"How's the project coming?"
(I'm finally putting 2 and 2 together...)
"Oh, it's great. Almost done. I'm ready to be done. My body's exhausted. I'm exhausted. But it's been good work."
"That's really great to hear. Where are you from again Juli?"
(I think he's interested in me...)
"Ohio..."
"Where in Ohio, Juli?"
(oh maybe he wants to visit me...)
"Mansfield."
"How do you spell that Juli?"
(ah shoot, Todd from MTV wants me to spell Mansfield)
"M-A-N-S-F-I-E-L-D"
"And how old are you?"
"23"
"Cool. Thanks! Just want to let you know you are for sure going to be in our piece on MTV news... at this point. We still need to do revisions."

You know what that means? Tentatively, this FRIDAY, AUGUST 25th, St. Bernard Parish will be on MTV News (most likely a little 3 minute bit) and... you might see me making a fool of myself because I don't remember saying anything intelligent.


... so I saved that number... put it in my phone as "MTV Todd"... just so I can feel special that MTV called me.

... You know you would have done it too.

lil update

I really don't usually have this much time to update like this and I don't know if a great number of people actually read my blogs anymore but I have too many stories to share that I can't keep to myself... and this is an example...

So my week began gracefully with my mercury spill. I brought a total of 5 emergency vehicles to good old camp hope from about 3:00 to 10:00 Monday night; 2 fire trucks, fire chief, the EPA, and a Hazmat crew. It was exciting.

Tuesday I am exhausted. I come back from work and shower and collapse on my bed. 10 minutes later my mom calls me. My credit card company called her. Someone's trying to steal my identity. They charged over $1000 worth of stuff on my card somehow. Don't know how they got my information but I think this means I should probably change my passwords online. I don't know what else they have access too if they got my card numbers. So I spent that night calling the company and some other place that investigates these things. It was fun.

Then... Thursday I'm at the work site and my team is doing an amazing job. I'm inside breaking down a door and using myself as a ramrod and I was really getting into it. (Little did I know there was an old piano wedged up behind it) And I hear someone calling my name outside the house. My team yells for me and I go out. And this tiny (I mean the most ridiculously tiny and lesser butt than I have) asian girl introduces herself to me as Sue Chin Pak from MTV news. I have no clue who this is. But she interviews me and apparently this is airing within the next two weeks. I'm not promising I'll be on it since it's only supposed to be a 3 minute piece. But, pretty exciting huh? And did I mention a few weeks ago I taught this up and coming musician Teddy Geiger and his band how to lay a roof? And then got free tickets to his show that night in downtown New Orleans. He was nice, though I didn't really talk to him much. I think he looks exactly like Harry Potter, but he doesn't wear those dark rimmed glasses in his shows. I guess it's too Harry Potterish. And that's probably a good decision on his part. I also didn't know who he was.

Ok, that's all I had to share. Some Australian news crew came into our house on Wednesday unannounced and we kicked them out for not introducing themselves.

good times with mercury

So yesterday I made a nice name for myself here... As bus captains we're required to snip the little vile of mercury off the thermostats and drop it into a bottle of water. Well, we've been so fortunate the past couple weeks to have a buttload of FEMA water shipped to camp and it comes in cans (and tastes like, in my opinion, when an annoying little kid splashes around in a hotel hot tub and water gets on your lips... mmm... salty body sweat and chlorine...). So I did not have a bottle at the site and decided instead of bringing back a little vile of mercury that was bound to get lost or crushed, to bring the whole thermostat back. As I was getting ready to place the vile into a plastic bottle to take outside to our mercury bucket, it was knocked out of my hands and shattered at my feet. Mercury went everywhere. I was laughing hysterically... for some reason it was funny at the time. But as more people walked by and a couple of us were pushing it into a pile in the middle of the hallway, I kept hearing comments about how scary mercury was. And then someone looked it up online and found out it is in fact pretty scary despite my mom always telling me she played with it all the time when she was little.

I went to ask our firemen who are always on site what to do. They weren't there so we called. Soon we had two fire trucks in front of the building and my little area outside my room was entirely blocked off with yellow tape. People were mad cause they couldn't get to their rooms. The firemen were annoyed because now they had to follow some protocol and evacuate the area and call EPA when all they wanted to do was sweep it up and forget about it. Then they started hassling me about how I had to go through decontamination and stuff. The director of the camp was furious that we didn't tell him. Some big wig army guy that oversees this whole operation showed up and they pointed me out to him... "she's the culprit..." Some dirty firemen began making crude comments to me about having to strip down there and take a chemical shower. I had to get out of this place.

So I went to get some pizza with some people. And as we were leaving, the director of the camp called. "The EPA is here. They need you to come back immediately so they can write up a report and get you decontaminated." I came back and they were taking pictures of the scene. More of the building had been blocked off. Everyone was standing around, tapping their feet, giving me dagger eyes (ok, not really... I might have been dreaming that part up). And they pulled me aside and asked me a bunch of questions. Apparently the EPA does not understand what a thermostat is because they didn't understand how much mercury there was. I even knew that. It's just a drop!

A haz-mat team pulled up and suited up in big yellow tyvec suits and masks and headed in. After a long time of chin-rubbing and "hmms" they decided to get a special vacuum that apparently sucks up the mercury. They sucked it up but the big scare was what was still in the air. So they had this little machine that tests the air quality and it was still too dangerous to enter. (The crew leader for EPA was quoted as saying "I'm not risking my mens lives to send them in there!")

So they took my clothes... and my teva sandals I was wearing at the time. They put them all in special bags and put a machine up to them to test the mercury levels. They were all 2 times the safety reading so they asked if I was really attached. I said yes. We only get a couple pairs of shirts and shorts and I have to wear them every day for work and get them sweaty and smelly. And my tevas... well, they're my tevas and yes I'm attached.

They took my information and told me they'd call me back to let me know if the decontamination process worked out with my clothes. Otherwise, they will have to be disposed of. Finally around 10:30 or so we were allowed back into our rooms and all the doors were left open all night and day to air the place out.

Didn't sleep at all last night cause I kept having these little anxiety moments where I was sure I was going to die now of mercury. And I never would have worried except for the stinking EPA stressed me out so much and took my clothes. So bus captains are no longer allowed to handle mercury. We have to leave it for hazmat at the site. People are now getting trained about mercury. The big wigs are having meetings about it all. Everyone important is asking "Why the hell did that bus captain have mercury in the building?!!" And I'm thinking why do we always have to find blame in someone? It was an accident! We'll move on. And I'll just go crazy by the time I reach 30.