Valerie is SERIOUSLY considering putting her name on the list to be picked from TSA/DHS employees to go work for FEMA for 6 weeks in Louisiana.
How cool is that?
She keeps asking me what I think it’d be like, and I keep telling her that it will fucking **SUCK** **ASS** while she’s there. It’ll be hot, and humid, and no electricity, and sleeping in a tent, and working 16 hour days, and dealing with people that have lost EVERYTHING and want you to FIX it for them… It might be picking up wood, or filling sandbags, or sitting at a folding table and helping people fill out FEMA paperwork…for 16 hours a day, every day.
But, when it’s all done, she will have finished a “boot camp” of sorts…something where you push yourself harder than you think you ever would have to, or ever *could*, and get something out of it nobody who didn’t do it right there alongside you can ever hope to understand. And it’ll be like going to Southeast Asia to help after the Tidal Wave, but you speak the language (sorta, it *is* Nawlins), and you don’t need a passport.
When it’s all said and done, it’ll be like the Military. Totally awful while you’re there, but totally awesome once you’re done doing it.