I would like to start this newsletter out by letting you all know I would fire my editor for not catching my typo last week (I actually know how to spell excite) but we're pretty short staffed around here and it's a volunteer position anyway - Oh, and it's filled by ME, so I guess you're all stuck with an occasional typo.

Now, on to the good stuff. The weather joined in the effort to make last Saturday our most successful volunteer day yet. The turnout was incredible, with volunteers working inside and outside of practically every building.

Thanks to Scott Davis and the Mount Edgecumbe High School group for taking loads of old electronics to the recycling center and thanks to Christian Fabian for helping with maintenance shed projects and for helping me sort old paint to go to the hazardous waste disposal facility. Mike Sullivan has taken on the task of organizing and cataloging the Sheet Music Library. Mike, Scott and Christian are Sitka Fine Arts Camp faculty members, and their commitment to the success of this project is inspiring. Thank you all for putting your backs, as well as you hearts into the Sitka Fine Arts Camp.

Thanks to Thad Poulson for renting the forklift and rearranging the storage containers behind the maintenance shed, as well as fixing and reassembling the information gazebo. Mat and Ted were able to put the forklift to work also, moving the old fuel tanks and loading tons (literally) of old steel into the dumptruck to be taken out to the steel recycling area. Nothing like a big piece of heavy equipment to get the guys fired up, some things never change!

We also fired up some of the heavy equipment left on campus and Linda Behnken and Mark Guillory were able to use the snorkel lift get up on the roof of Whitmore, while Rob Woolsey took the John Deere and filled in all the big potholes in the Hames parking lot.

We must be moving on, but one more overdue thank you please... every week the Gurule/McGuire family, Bernie, Terri and Donovan, have showed up early, quietly closed themselves in whatever area they been assigned to work on, and not come out until the project is done. Needless to say, we haven't seen much of them, but they've accomplished an incredible amount.

I wish I could thank every single person individually, but this isn't the Oscars, so please just know how much you're all appreciated.

This coming Saturday we'll be working on fine tuning a few of the projects we're almost done with. The devil's in the details and we'll be doing things like hanging curtains in Kellogg (yes, I KNOW I said we were out of there), checking cafeteria tables for security in Sweetland and pasting new room numbers on the door jams in Whitmore. There are also plenty of heavy duty jobs like continuing the quad buildings' roof repairs and finishing North Pacific's fire escape, and there are always things to clean and paint.

On Saturday, April 30th, we will be celebrating the incredible amount we've accomplished in the last 90 days by inviting all our amazing volunteers to join us on campus for a 100 volunteer day. Among other activities, we will have hot dogs and chili provided by Seamart, a scavenger hunt for the kids, and a fire in the fire pit at the end of the work day. If we haven't passed 10,000 volunteer hours by then, this should push us over the edge. So if you've been wanting to come check out the progress and lend a hand, or if you have a group looking for a community service project, this would be a great day to join the fun.