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Carole and I love this cartoon and quote it to each other routinely. It's by the legendary cartoonist George Booth
(Click the image, then click it again, to make it larger.)
(Click the image, then click it again, to make it larger.)
Apr. 2nd, 2008
Washington, DC Breast Cancer 3-Day
Apr. 2nd, 2008 05:43 pmOr, "Yet Another Fund-Raising Plea From Jay Furr"
Over the past few years I've been quite the annoyance, showing up every winter asking for donations to the Vermont Special Olympics as part of the annual Penguin Plunge. Then too, just the other day I asked for donations for the Relay for Life at the University of Georgia, a philanthropic event on behalf of the American Cancer Society -- but had to admit that I wouldn't be able to attend the event. It probably gets a bit old after a while hearing me plead for donations for this and that and the other.
Well, I've just been challenged to go a bit above and beyond what I've done in previous years. After moaning about how I always find it hard to get in shape and lose weight and so forth (although I'm making some progress already, this year), a friend (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sandyinstep) from the Washington, DC area who I went to college with said "Well, you could always come down here to DC and take part in the 3-Day for Breast Cancer with me."
The 3-Day, if you're not familiar with it, is a 60-mile walk, 20 miles a day over a long weekend, and all participants must raise AT A MINIMUM $2,200 to take part. That's one serious event. Anyone can jump in to an ice-cold lake for a few seconds... and I've never come close to raising $2,200 in any given year for the Special Olympics.
Nonetheless, after some thought, I said "OK. I'll do it."
I'm 40. My wife and I don't have any children and we're not planning to have any. In other words, I have no major life-changing events on the horizon: no baby's-first-steps, no teaching-the-kid-to-drive, no-taking-the-kids-to-Disneyland stuff. It's just going to be one boring year after another until I finally retire unless, as a character from "The Shawshank Redemption" said, I "get busy living or get busy dying."
In other words, it's time to start doing stuff. Curing breast cancer won't happen overnight but it's not going to happen at all unless the money keeps coming in for research and unless awareness is brought to and kept at a high level. Too many women die from the disease (and a few men as well) and far too few women, just judging by the comments I got when I told some of my co-workers that I was going to take part in this event, actually do get the annual screening exams and mammograms and so forth.
And, to bring the subject full circle back to the point that got me challenged to take part in this event in the first place: getting in shape to walk twenty miles a day for three days may not sound like much to someone who's fresh out of college and full of vim and vigor, but for someone who feels all macho after an hiking only six or eight miles in the Vermont hills, though, TWENTY miles a day for three consecutive days is going to require me to step things up a bit.
I'm setting myself a secondary (or tertiary, depending on how you're counting things) goal, in addition to raising the required $2,200 and successfully completing the 60-mile walk: getting my weight down to what it was when my wife and I left for our honeymoon way back in September of 1997. I was at 210 then. The least I've weighed since then was a brief flirtation with 217 in 2003, but otherwise, I've been orbiting the 233-pound mark for most of the ten years we've been married. Sad but true.
I'm asking for your help here. I'll do the 60-mile walk and all the training and stuff. I'll lose the pounds. But will you help out with a donation? Unless you're a monk, just about everyone reading this either knows someone who's survived breast cancer or, worse, died from breast cancer.
Let's try to do what we can to make breast cancer 100% survivable.
You can donate here (http://tinyurl.com/2ojk6o). I thank, from the bottom of my heart, anyone and everyone who can pitch in toward the cause.
Over the past few years I've been quite the annoyance, showing up every winter asking for donations to the Vermont Special Olympics as part of the annual Penguin Plunge. Then too, just the other day I asked for donations for the Relay for Life at the University of Georgia, a philanthropic event on behalf of the American Cancer Society -- but had to admit that I wouldn't be able to attend the event. It probably gets a bit old after a while hearing me plead for donations for this and that and the other.
Well, I've just been challenged to go a bit above and beyond what I've done in previous years. After moaning about how I always find it hard to get in shape and lose weight and so forth (although I'm making some progress already, this year), a friend (
sandyinstep) from the Washington, DC area who I went to college with said "Well, you could always come down here to DC and take part in the 3-Day for Breast Cancer with me."The 3-Day, if you're not familiar with it, is a 60-mile walk, 20 miles a day over a long weekend, and all participants must raise AT A MINIMUM $2,200 to take part. That's one serious event. Anyone can jump in to an ice-cold lake for a few seconds... and I've never come close to raising $2,200 in any given year for the Special Olympics.
Nonetheless, after some thought, I said "OK. I'll do it."
I'm 40. My wife and I don't have any children and we're not planning to have any. In other words, I have no major life-changing events on the horizon: no baby's-first-steps, no teaching-the-kid-to-drive, no-taking-the-kids-to-Disneyland stuff. It's just going to be one boring year after another until I finally retire unless, as a character from "The Shawshank Redemption" said, I "get busy living or get busy dying."
In other words, it's time to start doing stuff. Curing breast cancer won't happen overnight but it's not going to happen at all unless the money keeps coming in for research and unless awareness is brought to and kept at a high level. Too many women die from the disease (and a few men as well) and far too few women, just judging by the comments I got when I told some of my co-workers that I was going to take part in this event, actually do get the annual screening exams and mammograms and so forth.
And, to bring the subject full circle back to the point that got me challenged to take part in this event in the first place: getting in shape to walk twenty miles a day for three days may not sound like much to someone who's fresh out of college and full of vim and vigor, but for someone who feels all macho after an hiking only six or eight miles in the Vermont hills, though, TWENTY miles a day for three consecutive days is going to require me to step things up a bit.
I'm setting myself a secondary (or tertiary, depending on how you're counting things) goal, in addition to raising the required $2,200 and successfully completing the 60-mile walk: getting my weight down to what it was when my wife and I left for our honeymoon way back in September of 1997. I was at 210 then. The least I've weighed since then was a brief flirtation with 217 in 2003, but otherwise, I've been orbiting the 233-pound mark for most of the ten years we've been married. Sad but true.
I'm asking for your help here. I'll do the 60-mile walk and all the training and stuff. I'll lose the pounds. But will you help out with a donation? Unless you're a monk, just about everyone reading this either knows someone who's survived breast cancer or, worse, died from breast cancer.
Let's try to do what we can to make breast cancer 100% survivable.
You can donate here (http://tinyurl.com/2ojk6o). I thank, from the bottom of my heart, anyone and everyone who can pitch in toward the cause.
Link of the MONTH
Apr. 2nd, 2008 10:13 pmSweet holy pumpkins-in-a-cannon, but this is hysterical AND safe for work.
http://www.russiablog.org/2008/03/the_red_army_choir_sweet_home.php
Someone got the Russian Red Army Choir to back up a Finnish rock band called the Leningrad Cowboys on a performance of "Sweet Home Alabama."
http://www.russiablog.org/2008/03/the_red_army_choir_sweet_home.php
Someone got the Russian Red Army Choir to back up a Finnish rock band called the Leningrad Cowboys on a performance of "Sweet Home Alabama."