Our time here in the San Luis Valley is quickly coming to an end. One of the strange things with the Refuge (and maybe all National Wildlife Refuges, I don’t know) is that for the month of September, they cannot make any purchases. This has really put a crimp in our maintenance duties. The last week of August we looked at our remaining list of jobs and tried to figure out what supplies we would need to purchase in order to complete as many items on our to-do list as we could during September.
Our most recently finished project was to build shelves in three closets at the Monte Vista Headquarters. Mark measured and cut all our newly purchased wood and I sanded all the rough edges.
I then spent several days painting.
The local Friends group uses one of the rooms to store hats, t-shirts and various other supplies. They had pretty much put all their things in the middle of the floor on top of some exercise equipment that was being stored in the room. Mark built shelves for the Friends room and we purchased a shelving unit for one wall.
I spent a day sorting through all their things and organizing the new shelves.
Here is the transformation:
Oh how familiar! Every refuge we've volunteered at goes through this end of the fiscal year "lament"... going from flat broke to... hey, we have $50,000 to spend before the end of the month. That's how the boiler room got the paint at Aroostook this year... and some more fencing... and... I don't know what all. Having been in fiscal services for all my working years, it drives me nuts. But.. I've learned to just roll my eyes and watch it happen. You folks did a great job on that room... the refuge should be happy!
ReplyDeleteIt sure is inconvenient!
ReplyDeleteThank you Sharon for the nice comments.
Teri