SummeRun 2014!

Let's talk about a big finish. My grand finale will be a 5K in support of the Marsha Rivkin Center for Ovarian Cancer. They do research and treatment for women with ovarian cancer. They do fantastic work, and have created a community of support around these patients. I ran last year on my birthday, and it was a really fun, and inspiring event.

To make this a big finish, I want to raise a lot of money. You can support me or my team- or join the team!- here. My goal is to finish out my fundraising goal with this event. Currently, that means I need to raise another $1800. Hopefully that number will shrink with some other events along the way, but I gotta raise some funds!

I'm also accepting ideas for fun, but run-worthy costumes. The briefcase 5K was a hoot, and I can only think of more reasons to run in costume.

Something Amazing: 40%!!

Saturday morning, we somehow talk ourselves, our friends, their parents and my parents to get get up early and go to a small 5K, the Bridge to Adoption 5K. It had been quite a hectic week, since both Matt and I have been busy with HiveBio stuff, but we wanted to run this event.

Fig 1. Before the Race. Matt and Julie are saving every ounce of energy.

1) It's super close.
2) Jeffrey and Matt ran last year, and came in 1 and 2.
3) Adoption is even more on everyone's minds of late.... and this event is fundraising for the adoption of a second child in the organizers family.
4) As always, the multi-person multiplier seemed in my favor here.
Since I was with my parents as I was registering, they agreed to come and walk, under the condition that we would all have breakfast together afterwards. It's a nice run through Blyth Park, and although Matt and Jeffrey both put up better times than last year, someone else beat them.  But, hey, we won gift cards in the raffle, and Julie even won a pair of new shoes in the raffle.  How great is that!

Fig 2. Post-race, and post-breakfast. A good time was had by all.

And then I came home, and added the tally to the spreadsheet. 7 people at the 5K, my time at HiveBio, Matt's time with the HiveBio computers, the value of the computer themselves...., and holy cats! We just hit 40%!! Seriously, more than $12,000 raised for charity.

While it is obvious to me now that I need to spend some time explaining what I am doing with HiveBio, I also want to spend some time reflecting on the momentum we have currently. I've mentioned this before; the best ways to volunteer time are the ways that a most compatible with your lifestyle. I can easily ask my mom and grandmother to help me make dinner for the shelter because they like to cook. I can easily convince Jeffrey to run a 5K (who in turn can get the rest of his family to tag along), since he loves running anyway. I filled up our garage with old computers, and Matt was keen to get fixing them. My plan for the rest of the year is to highlight diferent causes that I like to support, and hopefully this will help spring to mind ways that others can help as well.

What a Great Birthday!

I have the best friends and family ever. Seriously. I'm still so excited about all the good stuff yinz did for my big day.

First things first: we shattered the 30% mark! 31.5% is the official high water mark as of my birthday!

Is it crass to talk numbers? I don't really care. For my actual birthday, my awesome friends and family helped me to push up the thermometer nearly $900- nearly 3% of the way there! In one day!

So let's break it down. I had TWO friends go in for their very first blood donations, thanks Karen and Ruth! Both of them said it was not terrible, that people were very friendly and they got to eat cookies. You should try this.

My parents gave another donation to one of my favorite teachers on Donor's Choose who is moving to a new classroom and needs (choke) pencils for her third grade students who can't afford their own pencils and crayons. Ms. Kacsur's classroom has been supported by my folks in the past, someday soon I hope to scan in some of the thank you cards I got from her students. *misty eyes*

AND my parents gave me some hats to take to Friends of Youth (you may be wondering if generosity is hereditary: I believe it is a learned behavior). Combined with the lamps and tent from Karen, I'm ready to take quite a haul to the Friend's of Youth office up the hill from me, to distribute these items to foster, at risk and homeless youth.

My parents ALSO gave some money to Northwest Harvest, the regional food bank. It both infuriates and inspires me that there can be people in America who would go hungry, if it weren't for the work of food banks like Northwest Harvest. I'm glad to finally get them up on the board.


I'm so glad to support Northwest Harvest, in fact, that I asked my friends to participate in a game of "skill" at my birthday party. We opened a pool for ladder golf, and planned to split the pool between the winner and Northwest harvest.  This resulted in both some friendly rivalry AND $80 for Northwest Harvest. Aren't my friends awesome??

I had a great time, and I really can't think of a better way to spend the day. Thanks to my friends to hung out with me, supported the causes I care about, and generally made me feel awesome about turning 30.

Before the SummeRun 5K. It might take me longer than 10 minutes.

Here is How I Want to Celebrate

I'm turning 30 this year. For my birthday, I'd really like to live in a more wonderful world.
For my birthday, I would like:

• all of my friends to go donate blood (I add an hour to the thermometer for each donation)
• for money to go to Northwest Harvest to support the good work they do to battle hunger (Text ENDHUNGER to 80888 to make a $10 donation from your phone.* *See details here.)
• for people to come and run a 5K with me to support efforts to end Ovarian Cancer. You can join my team when you register (30 for my 30th, of course), or donate to my efforts here. But it would be most fun if you came to run with me.
• for people nearby to come to my house, eat cake, share merriment and bring me items from the Friends of Youth Supply Wish List, to support the needs of foster children in transition and homeless youth on the Eastside. More details on this to emerge, but Sunday afternoon, my house.

If you do any of these things, or any other really awesome thing in your community, let me know so I can throw it on the thermometer.You'll be glad you did, because then we can share this happy and good feeling.

And, if you know of any good charity food events (pancake breakfast, crab feed, etc) in the area, please let me know so I can add it to my schedule!

--Update 7/17/13--
I've hit my fundraising goal for the 5K! Thanks to the support of my friends and coworkers, how cool! Ovarian Cancer research and patient relief can still use your help, so it's not to late to pledge. Or consider supporting one of my teammates.

We are getting so close to 30%...

Pre-Birthday Anxiety

When my friends started turning 30, there was this apprehension that maybe life is over now, that our chance to be cool was over and that life would necessarily be more boring. I can say that of my close friends who have passed this milestone birthday, none of them have gotten less cool, and most of them have started living even fuller lives, like having kids, launching new careers and finally being successful in the careers they've been investing in. Turning 30 isn't cool in a Seventeen Magazine kind of way, but I traded in my cool and popular card a long time ago. I'm looking forward to having the confidence of experience and moving on to the next stage of life.

But... did you know that Ben Haggerty just turned 30? Yes, the Same Love and Thrift Shop rapper, artist, activist and damn cool guy. He and I have had the same time on earth, and I have arguably done less to impact the world I live in then he has. I mean, this whole project (or initiative, as Ruth suggests I call it) is supposed to help me address that. But, with my birthday actually showing up, I'm starting to feel a little behind. I often feel a little behind. Because after my birthday, I'm going to have to clarify that it's not that I am raising money for my birthday, I'm raising money now that I am 30, which is somehow less compelling.

I am still hoping that I can use the general enthusiasm that people have for birthdays to make a little extra good in the world, y'know, for my birthday. I was thinking of hosting a trail work party, but since I know nothing about that and the Washington Trail Association needs about 2 months (and firm numbers) to put that together, we may have to go another route.  At the moment, I am thinking of doing a 5K for cancer research, and possibly hosting a party (because, cake) and asking people to bring things that the shelter is looking for. But I'm not totally sure I can pull off hosting a party at the moment. And there is a chance I can do a work party at the HiveBio Lab, which would be a big help for a nascent non profit (and scores hours with a multi-person multiplier for the thermometer), although arguably not the same heart strings impact as feeding the hungry and curing cancer. Ack! So many decisions!

I hope when I do turn 30 I am no longer paralyzed by indecision or overwhelmed by simple planning and management tasks. And that maybe I can still be a little cool.

-----
I took dinner to the shelter again tonight. I'm pretty pleased with how quickly this has turned from a massive source of anxiety to just another set of tasks. Having my mom and grandmother to help with the cooking was clearly the missing piece to a low-stress dinner for 15 thing.

Busy Day- Go charity!

A long weekend mean lots of time to get involved in the community. We kicked off the day with a 5K that was benefiting the Special Olympics.  We can talk about how slow my time was, or we can talk about how awesome it was to see families encouraging this Down's Syndrome kids on the same course- or how cool it was when the lady pushing her cerebral palsy son crossed the finish line.  It was a pretty great 5K.

Figure 1: Delicious Pancake Image stolen from here, the KITH website

And THEN, we went for the KITH/Kiwanis Pancake Breakfast. And I say "we" to mean not just myself and husband, but his bestie and wife and kiddo. We got the multiplier! The awesome thing about going to a pancake breakfast with a 4 year old is the access to high quality pancakes. Sure, we all got yummy pancakes, but the kid got Mickey Mouse Pancakes- with a smile, how do you even do that?- a doggy pancake and a BIKE pancake.  Kiwanis seriously knows how to make their pancakes; I'll be watching out for opportunities to eat and support good causes with pancakes.

Cement City 5K

When I started this project, I has some ambitious idea that I would start running charity 5Ks.  This is a cool idea, it combines recreation and philanthropy.  The problem is that I am simply not one of nature's runners.  As I've been figuring out how I might really pull this thing off, I realized I should probably stick to things that aren't any harder then they have to be.  There are plenty of ways to do good that aren't miserably hard.

I also had this idea that I might use my volunteer time to support the projects and efforts of my friends and family, especially those who already give a lot of thier time.  My mother-in-law is a perfect example.  She is retired, and basically spends her time being a pillar of the community.  She volunteers with a lot of organizations.  She was able to talk me out of using people's existing volunteer efforts in my totals because she volunteers WAY more than 900 hours a year. 

When she mentioned that she was going to walk a 5K to support the Concrete Lions Booster Club , I figured, what the heck, I could walk a 5K.  My husband and I got to make a weekend of it, and it was one of those cool events where everyone was cheering everyone before and after the race.  Yay!  Go participants!  I have no doubt that the Boston Marathon Bombing galvanized the sense of community here, and I was grateful to be a part of it.  Especially since my (personal best) 5K time was not that much faster than the walkers- including the 83 year old who did the route with two walking sticks.

But we didn't get sweaty in the rain to make me feel good about my fitness, we went to support the Concrete Lions Booster Club , who in Concrete supports the (rural, poor) schools and students.  Way to be!