Tony Forrest is the man with the plan for volunteers. You may recognize him as the paper-throwing but fun-loving manager from our “Just another day at the office” dance commercial, but Tony also has a penchant for organization and has taken on the daunting role of volunteer coordinator during the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition build.
Tony has been doing his best to ensure that everyone who has volunteered time to help out receives all the information they need and that all the required shifts are filled. We have over 600 general volunteer submissions, and a couple of shifts are already maxed out, which is awesome, but there’s still plenty of space we need to fill.
The late night shifts seem to be the hardest to fill: 8pm-2am, and 2am-8am. Those times might be outside of your normal sleep cycle, but rest assured there will be plenty of activity going on at the build site; the operation does not stop just because the sun goes down. If you would like to volunteer and can alter your schedule to help out during one of the late night shifts, Tony and the rest of the team would really appreciate it! Make sure you select a shift when you sign up.
Update: We need volunteers for all of the late night shifts but here are the ones with the fewest sign ups.
Day 2 (Tue Aug 23) – Shift 4 – (2am-8am) has 2 volunteers
Day 4 (Thu Aug 25) – Shift 4 – (2am-8am) doesn’t have any volunteers
Day 5 (Fri Aug 26) – Shift 4 – (2am-8am) has 1 volunteer
Day 6 (Sat Aug 27) – Shift 4 – (2am-8am) has 2 volunteers
Day 7 (Sun Aug 28) – Shift 3 – (8pm-2am) has 1 volunteer
Day 7 (Sun Aug 28) – Shift 4 – (2am-8am) has 1 volunteer
Update 2: All the general volunteer shifts are full! Everyone can still visit the site as a spectator.
Telly Leung, recently seen in the hit Fox series “Glee”, will be starring in the “Building Happiness Extreme Performance Concert” on Tuesday, August 16th at 8 pm in the Cape Henlopen High School auditorium. The concert is a fundraiser to help with the upcoming Extreme Makeover: Home Edition project.
The show immediately follows the free 6 pm Pep Rally, which also takes place at the high school, so you’ll already be pumped up and ready for a great show.
A variety of other performers will also grace the stage, including Blue Moon favorite, Pamala Stanley, Melanie Bradley, Leigh Nordley, Jerry Birl, the Vineland Regional Dance Company, the Delaware Arts Conservatory Tap Dancers, and the Delaware Choral Society.
You can grab tickets online or at any Schell Brothers community – the suggested minimum donation is just $30 and all the proceeds go directly to the Sussex County Family Fund. The school auditorium has limited space so get tickets early if you definitely want to catch the show.
Our friends at Ocean Atlantic Sotheby’s have organized a fine homes and art walk through Rehoboth this weekend. “Stroll & Roll” should be an interesting exercise (literally). It kicks off this Saturday, June 25th, 2011 at 9am simultaneously at each of the 11 homes for sale on the tour, so you can take your pick and jump in wherever it’s most convenient for you. Check out the map.
Each beautiful home will offer complimentary refreshments and a featured local artist displaying select works of art. In fact, two of the artists also moonlight for Echelon – Ivana Biela and Matty Adler. If you visit four or more of the homes you will earn a chance to win an original painting from Matty, like the one above.
The stroll ends at noon at the Ocean Atlantic Sotheby’s office (330 Rehoboth Ave.) with refreshments, live outdoor music, and face painting for the kids… and exceptionally confident adults. If you go, take some pics and leave some comments here.
You probably guessed this already. Those mountains in the background of the photo above are not a new landmark in Rehoboth Beach. Those are the Colorado Rockies. I snuck out of Delaware for a couple of days to join a friend on a road trip. We grabbed our coats and long underwear, jumped in his Ford E250 van and headed west.
I should mention something about this ordinary van; it has an extra-ordinary addition – it’s topped off with a ginormous toupee made of solar panels, strapped right to the roof! Every day the panels eat a bunch of sunshine and recharge a pair of golf cart batteries (hidden in an unassuming Igloo cooler). The batteries in turn power an inverter that gives us regular old 120 VAC to keep our laptops and phones and cameras and TV alive and kicking on this cross-country expedition.
The solar panels were provided by the awesome people at Clean Energy USA. Normally they install these things on homes that sit still, but they were excited to play along with us for this mobile experiment.
On our adventure, we spent the first two and a half days driving from Delaware to Colorado. We “road-roughed” it, stopping at highway rest areas at night, cramming custom cut-out silver insulation panels against the windows, and zipping up inside our sleeping bags to keep warm while we watched movies on our 22″ TV (thanks to our solar-charged set up). When we hit Denver, it was time to upgrade our digs and shower in something larger than a sink. It’s amazing how clean you feel when you finally shed “last night’s” clothes after 3 days. I don’t think I’ll ever make it as a real mountain man, or even a bona fide street bum.
I might do okay as a ski bum though, especially in Breckenridge – but I’d have to pick up skiing first. One afternoon, we ventured out from Denver to the small ski town, up into the mountains along a scenic route. On the way we met horses and passed through the real South Park, where everything is unfortunately not made out of construction paper.
One quick tip – if you find yourself in downtown Denver one morning, in need of food and an injection of hipness, head to Snooze on 23rd and Larimer. Best breakfast ever.
I’m back in Delaware now, but the SolaRolla (our juvenile attempt at a clever name for the van) is still out west, collecting free energy from the sun and exploring the great outdoors. You can follow @SolaRolla on Twitter for updates and photos.
Listen to Dan Gaffney’s October 5th interview with Dan Kauffman on WGMD about Breakwater and Pinewater Woods. Dan also mentions the Schell Brothers homeowner appreciation party Coming Together that happened October 2nd, 2010 at Venus on the Half Shell in Dewey Beach.
Dan Kauffman interview by Dan Gaffney on WGMD Radio
