TGIF

Friday, November 19^th  (Morning)

Back to 1613 Heights for our final day.  Nieko was our Site Supervisor.  Today we were joined by Sister Mary Ellen and Sister Frances. (Who took a day off from her job at SBP.)  Today’s assignment?  Finishing up as much as possible inside so that the next team could concentrate on the exterior.

We continued with applying masking tape, painting, and cleaning.  Neiko continued cutting plywood for new soffits which were promptly painted.  We also scraped paint off the columns in the front of the house.

Heidi, our Project Manager stopped by for a final visit.  Lo and behold, she also brought back my bag of tools that had been MIA since Wednesday.

In mid-morning we took our last trip to the General for a comfort stop and some last-minute shopping.  For example,

On a lark, I bought $1 instant lottery tickets for our crew.  Not unexpectedly,
Sister Mary Ellen won $4.  And Neiko won a free ticket.  (I hope he parlays his free ticket into a fortune.)

Back to work for an hour or so and then we broke for lunch.  We decided to visit Ketch of the Day, a local place in “downtown” St. Bernard that caught Colleen’s eye.  A great choice – the décor was nothing special, but the food was great.  More po boys, shrimp creole and this time, some fried catfish.  Yummy.

As we were finishing up our meal, we noticed the following sign on the wall:

God has watched over us in St. Bernard Parish and he continues to watch over us.  St. Bernard Parish is where God brought you and me together.  He has watched over us and guided us.  He sent Katrina to us for whatever reason.  He is creating a new path that each of us must follow.  That path might separate us, but never break our bond.  We will always have our memories.

It was back to 1613 for the final stretch.  We closed off each of the four bedrooms one by one as we finished them off.  The kitchen (with the cabinets 1/3 installed) was straightened up.  Both bathrooms were cleaned up.  Finally we collected all the tools and extra supplies and stacked them in the living room.  And that was it.

I must confess that I was checking my watch counting off the minutes until we finished, but not for the reason you would expect.  I was actually sad that our time at 1613 was coming to a close and was wishing that we were staying longer.

So we packed up, said our goodbyes to Nieko and returned to our home base