The Last Full Day Part 2 Day 8

The Last Full Day Part 2 

Day 8

I'd be lying to all of you if I told you I wasn't kind of happy and relieved to be done with our gig here at the lighthouse. It's been fun, interesting and I have to say challenging. I met over 1500 people in less than a week and talked personally to around 1479. That's a lot of conversions! However, it's time to keep this vacation moving along. 

Tonight, I'm sitting here with Mr. Quilter Cook as we munch on supper. We are enjoying some Stouffer's pizza bread and might end with some Milk Duds for dessert. I have just enough food to get us to Tuesday morning when we leave what we are now calling our Passion Project. 

So, if you read my earlier blog from today and saw the volunteer hours equaling 120 for the week collectively, I thought I'd explain myself. Here's how it adds up: 

Each Morning beginning at around 7am - Before Opening

* sweeping walks, steps down to beach and to parking lot and around log cabin on property 

*weeding flower gardens, watering the million half-whiskey barrels full of plants

*digging junk out of cigarette pails filled with sand around property and beach

*cleaning the huge commercial rugs for lighthouse and sidewalk before opening, pulling them off the fence from overnight and before replacing them on sidewalks and in lighthouse, sweeping areas clean

*cleaning grounds in general and unlocking gates 

*performing general household chores to perfection inside lighthouse just in case manager had a meeting in living quarters - which ironically never seemed to transpire

*Clean tower windows inside and out and re-sweep and vacuum any sand that had accumulated overnight on the steps leading up to the tower. 

*Start videos throughout visitor areas
*Count down starting cash for register, set up SQUARE Point of Sale system for the day, sign in online with manager to prove you didn't run away during the night.
*sweep down gift shop and entrance and museum on first floor once again
* Do a quick dusting of items in shop
*Hang flag and open sign at EXACTLY 10am.

10am-5pm  Gift Shop Duties 

*greeting visitors: smiles, smiles, smiles! 

*sharing history of lighthouse

*policing who goes up to tower and that they have paid for the ticket

*working register/Square POS system

* keeping inventory full 

*fetching tshirts, sweatshirts and etc. from wherever they may be stored...including the Captain Hook cellar 

*answering phone, giving winery and dining suggestions 

*Saying "I'm sorry, I do not know the answer to your question. I'm a volunteer light keeper for the week from Madison." Then, going into the whole spiel about the Keeper program.
*Watch to make sure things are going ok on the beachfront and that no pop-up weddings or artist groups have decided they will be squatters for the day. No weddings with chairs or over 5 total people allowed on grounds and artists may paint of course, but not in groups of more than three at a time, due to space. (Honestly, there WAS a wedding. We have photos. It was a beautiful bride in vintage lace and a serviceman in full Coast Guard dress uniform. We let it go. Good grief.)

After Hours Duties 

*Closing all the gates at EXACTLY 5pm

*Sweeping entire lighthouse down by hand ( I don't mean a broom. It's a real hand brush) as instructed by manager. See Tuesday's blog for full detailed instructions.

*Vacuuming between all cracks of wooden floor planks to suck up the sand. Supposedly, you couldn't run the vacuum over the cracks. The manager insisted EACH crack be done individually. Well, we ran the vacuum over it and had the same results, so there you go.( *Edit note: We found it interesting that when we were gone on our day off and the mgr. took over...no after duties were performed at all and the cracks were FULL of sand.)

*Washing tower windows with Windex and a rag, then sweeping with hand brush and vacuuming the tower area down. 

*Sweep all the walks, steps and pathways to parking lot - to and from the 1/4 mile from lighthouse (!) and down to the beach-again (probably your 15th time of the day) I used this as an excuse to get out of the gift shop every 90 min or so and talk with people outside. But I did work up a few blisters to prove I did actual sweeping as well.
*Windex all interior windows throughout lighthouse - not just the gift shop. All of them.

*Lock the log cabin AFTER you wash the exterior windows of lighthouse and cabin. Then, sweep all the visitor areas around the cabin to parking lot.
*Check inside the six porta potties for....well...whatever. We didn't have to clean them so we decided we didn't need to look inside them either. That was an executive decision on our part. If cleaning those were part of the so-called duties--that was the line in the sand for us. But alas, it all worked out. The cleaning company came each morning early around 6 and took care of those. We had enough to do.

In our free time, we also did the following:

*Cut grapevine leaves crowding steps to the beach 

*Cut out all dead hosta shoots around property

So, I lied. I guess that it was about 141 hours we volunteered in the last week. 

Tomorrow, we start our vacation FROM our vacation in Traverse City, MI! WE ARE OFF FOR THE DAY and leaving by 9am to RELAX! 

Tuesday, there is a tour bus coming in at 9:30. The manager and a local volunteer will cover it. So, we were asked to please be out by 9am. 

They'll need our parking space.  

The Quilter Cook