Where to begin.. I can only start by reiterating my previous post-
I have decided to keep working both jobs until the middle of July. While Montpelier promises to be a solid employment opportunity for the fall, the lack of hours I get in the summer is a real issue. On the other hand the other job I have working for a city road crew(yeah like black topping and the like) is extremely physically taxing and cuts down on the energy I have left to work on my academic endeavors. I'll be the first to preach the value of necessity. Sometimes you just have to do it. I mean those things that are sometimes seen as less valuable professionally. (In this case it's working a job that is manual labor, while trying to get into a Ph. D. program.) The greatest things about my job thus far have been the physical benefits specifically: the positive stress I've put my muscles under. >

~Below: first documentation of yours truly having naturally forming muscles. 

As well as the people I work with- I know what you're thinking: that perhaps a group of men who do hard labor and are from one of the most rural parts of West Virginia could be a tough crowd. They are tough trust me, but they have served a valuable role for me these past few weeks. They have taught me not to forget my roots, and the value of working hard, and reinforced several simple lessons that I already knew. -The value of old fashioned hard work. There's also an older guy that I work with who is in his late 60's and he always reminds me, "IF YOU'RE GONNA DO A JOB YOU MIGHT AS WELL DO IT RIGHT" I know I haven't worked all of this out in my head, and perhaps my thoughts on working this summer will change a lot by the time I'm finished, but right now I am gaining a lot from it.

Last night after work I "took on" my grandma's hillside. The bank of the hill is particularly steep and she had been asking me to weed eat it for a couple of days. I was convinced that I would slip, fall in some thorny bushes--which populate the hill with random weeds--only to roll down the hill into the busy main street below, and dying some miserable brake screeching death. I didn't die(thank goodness.) Instead I repelled down the hillside very carefully with weedeater in hand taking out all the vegetation I could(possibly a bit of an exaggeration) and ripping from their roots the invasive bushes that filled the bank.
I kept reminding myself of a memory I had of my grandfather(who pasted away in May 2005.) I remember looking at the blueprints of this small single family house that he helped to design and construct on the top of a hill carved into the scene of hilly South Main Street. I kept telling myself as I was grappling down the side of the hill- If I were building my dream house, I'd want it on a hill too.  Could I really blame the guy for picking the lot that he did? I even began to think about the house itself. What would I have done differently? What economic factors were involved  in this design process.. Sometime between re-stringing the weedeater and ripping up some invasive bushes it dawned on me that I had yet again turned it all back to the architecture. My grandparents house is modest, but the story of a man and wife and three little girls, is what makes the house amazing and makes the neighborhood and even city worth it most of the time.