This week I started volunteering for the Meals On Wheels program. I got an email about some service opportunities so I went to the Orientation last week, and now I'm delivering meals to Columbus residents over 65-years old or anyone with a disability. It's been a neat experience, especially since the program has their meal delivery sysytem down to a science, All of Columbus is divided into over 15 routes, and I handle the Clintoville area which basically covers High Street, north of the OSU campus. I have to check off and record the times for all the 30 people on my list, and make sure I give them the appropriate meal since they range from Hot, Cold, Kosher, & Puree and they get different types of milk or juice.

Here's one of the many meals I deliver out of the different selections. Each person gets two containers and a drink.

The first time I went on my route, another driver came along to show me their normal way of travel and all the back roads. It can get kind of tedious driving and stopping at every single house and continuously having to pull out the right the meal, but it's okay when I think about the elderly not being able to eat all day. They like to chat for a while and ask me all sorts of questions since I'm probably the only person they might've seen all day. I only deliver meals once a week, and it's interesting to know that the whole Meals On Wheels program is ran primarily by volunteers and random people who sign up. The other staff of drivers and cooks are pretty dedicated too because they work on Holidays and even on weekends.

These are the food bags that I pick up at this church and then place them in the back seat of my car.

I started to feel the mega-time constraints of being a news reporter this weekend. Because it's like their schedules are not their own. They are there to serve the public, and it's hard to try and fit a breaking news story in a 9 to 5 work day. I was supposed to be leaving the news station a little early on Thrusday since my sister and I were driving back to Atlanta for the weekend, but I didn't even get off till around 7:00pm!

I had went on a bunch of stories that day from Fireworks safety to Buckeye Lake events. So we had to go to a couple fireworks stores, the Fire Marshall's office, and then Buckeye Lake. I had learned more about the different types of firecrackers and their restrictions than I had ever wanted to know. So right when I get back to the NBC station, they send me off on another story to assist a photog on breaking news. It was only 4:00pm then so I thought that maybe I could've made it back home in good time...except the story was in London, Ohio all across town, a solid hour away.

So I called my sister, who of course wasn't going to be too happy,especially since I was the reason we left late for Memorial Weekend too, also because of a news story gone long. But I had to talk with the London police and other crime scene investigators about a sex-offender who had been kidnapping Columbus teens and bringing them to his London residence. That took at least 45 minutes, and by the time my sister and I got on the road for our 9-hour drive....it was already 8:00pm. So you can only imagine how late or rather early it was when we arrived in Atlanta.