nlbarber

Tomorrow's the three-hour JazzerThon event, raising money for Susan G. Komen for the Cure. We had a mini-practice session again this morning after regular class for one person who really wanted another run-through. But it was only the instructor, her, and me...we'll have 10 people total doing this routine at the JazzerThon. We may try to find a corner and practice right before the event tomorrow...or not. Luckily it's a pretty simple routine.

I'm already equipped with aching muscles, as I went from class to collect a car-load of wood chips that were offered on freecycle. (I covered the back end of the CR/V with a tarp, and shoveled until more would have overflowed chips into the car.) Then it was home to spread them over the pathway from my front walk to the side of the house where the crawlspace access is, renewing the old chips that were there. For good measure, I grabbed an old coil of plastic lawn edging (bought for some other project and never used) and installed it on the downslope side of the path to try to keep the chips from migrating. That was a good 2-1/2 hours of shoveling and hauling, and my shoulders are letting me know about it. Must take an Advil before bed...

Should have mentioned this earlier, but...better late than never.

Sunday I'm participating in my third Jazzerthon, a fund-raising event for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. About 500 of us will dance and exercise for 3 hours in the ballroom of the Ritz-Carlton Buckhead, after having collected donations from those who are willing to support our efforts. I don't think anyone needs the pitch on the worthiness of fighting breast cancer, so let me just say that the Komen Foundation supports breast-cancer research directly, and also gives community grants for things like screenings, support groups, education efforts, and other local needs. It's a great organization that makes good use of the money they raise.

Unfortunately the Jazzerthon is not an event well set up for Internet fund-raising (or I'd have been much more....vocal, so to speak, on LJ and other places where I'm involved in a community). However, if anyone is interested in supporting me in this and donating to an excellent cause, I can take PayPal through Friday (the 16th) to my LJ account name at alum dot emory dot edu.

Days 2 and 3 of Sunbelt went well, but were sweltering. Wednesday morning another exhibitor proclaimed that the front that went through Tuesday would cool off the mornings--hate to tell ya, but that was a warm front. Highs yesterday were above 90°F and the humidity was almost 80% in the afternoon. Today was merely 87° with a lower 46% humidity, by the environmental monitoring setup in the next booth.

( Sunbelt vs. other farm shows )
( Not a good dinner decision )
Now I'm mostly packed, and my father is too. We'll get up fairly early, grab coffee, and drive to Tifton or so to have breakfast before going on to Atlanta. I'd like to get there in time for my regular Weight Watchers meeting, and maybe do a museum visit that both Daddy and I would like in the afternoon as the exhibit closes Saturday. Seeing it on Saturday is problematic, as Saturday morning is the Walk to Cure Diabetes . Any last minute donations would be welcome--actually they'll take donations for several weeks after the Atlanta event, so feel free to be late. <g> And many thanks to trolleypup for the earlier donation!

Perhaps the state of last week can be said by this: yesterday, after running errands in the afternoon, I crossed off the next-to-last item of the To-Do list...from the previous weekend.

I did get to Jazzercise 3 evenings, but wanted 4 in prep for the Jazzercise for the Cure event next weekend. (My planned Saturday session was punted to attend my nephew's basketball game while his parents and older sister were interviewing at a private school. Five-year-olds playing basketball is....interesting. Made even more so by the wildly varying skill levels....)

Got a couple of big tasks finished at work, but there's still a really big one overdue--will really have to crunch on it tomorrow and the next day. My home desk is a little clearer than it was Friday, but I still haven't made a start on the taxes. I did finally get caught up on the Bujold list and on piffle (thank in major part to the significant drop in list traffic on Bujold, finally), and I give up getting caught up reading LJ. Will just start reading my fl from now, and try to at least post more often.

Must pay a couple of bills and do some bookkeeping in Quicken yet tonight...

The JazzerThon yesterday was a smashing success, and a lot of fun, to boot. I raised $650, plus another $100 was added by my center from the donations made by members who were not going to the Jazzerthon themselves--$750 being the amount at which another incentive item kicked in. My center (with 13 people signed up) raised $6,425, and the entire event (registration was capped at 500) raised $170,000. I was a distant second among my center's group to Sherry, who raised over $2,400.


The event was organized into 3 sessions, with 15 minute breaks between them. The first session consisted of various of the Atlanta-area Jazzercise centers each leading one song and dressed in some sort of costume suggested by their song. Larger centers, some with upwards of 40 or 50 participants, had sprung for professionally printed T-shirts for the event and used those as the basis of their costumes. The session was rapid-fire--one song would end, and the next one cued up in seconds--but the scramble to get groups on and off the stage seemed to go smoothly.

My center had the second song, so we were allowed into the room early and could assemble beside the stage (where the group with the warm-up song were in place when the doors opened). We did a song called "Fighter", and our costumes were limited to pink T-shirts (as ribbons for breast cancer concerns are pink, that was the color of the day) with iron-ons on the back saying "Knock out breast cancer". Oh, and pink wrapping around our hands to look like a boxer's wraps. We did do a mini-skit, with one of the instructors representing Jazzercise and another Breast Cancer, and the instructor who cued the song (telling everyone what steps to do) added in bits about the fight against breast cancer and what Jazzercise has tried to do to help. Unfortunately, I think most of this couldn't be heard over the music and general noise levels.

The middle session was a body-sculpting session--a series of exercises to tone up various muscle groups. Then there was one more break, and the final session was led by Judi Sheppard Missett, the woman who came up with the Jazzercise concept. At almost 60, she could dance most of us into the ground. I'm sorry that I was far enough back in the crowd that I couldn't see her feet, both because I'd have liked to observe her technique, and because it would have been much easier to follow the steps. <g> She ended with a cool-down and stretch song, and at one point told us to pull our knee up to our chest and stretch--and she straightened her leg out with her knee pressed to her face. We all rolled with laughter.

It was a wonderful but exhausting day. The room was very crowded, so if you moved the wrong way or stretched a little too far you would always hit someone. And during the first session it was very hot, though later the hotel managed to get the room cooler. At the end of the day I was wiped--feet sore, muscles aching, but still with a real feeling of accomplishment.

...and I hate it. And I'm not good at it, which is related, I'm sure.

So why did I decide to participate in a JazzerThon (3 hour session of aerobics) to raise money for breast cancer research? Let's just say it seemed like a good idea at the time. Or maybe that I got caught up in the enthusiasm in my Jazzercise class. Or something. Anyway, I'm now committed to the JazzerThon on February 15 (not a problem) and to trying to solicit contributions to sponsor my doing that.

I'm not the face-to-face solicitation type, so my plan (other than hitting up my father and sister-in-law, and contributing myself, of course) is to put up a note at work, and send out a note to the neighborhood e-mail list. I'm debating a short note to the piffle and Bujold lists, where I feel I have established something of a presence. I'm on lots of other lists, but post so seldom that no one would know who this person begging for money was. The "return" on these kinds of solicitations is bound to be much lower than hitting up one's friends in person, but them's the breaks. This is what I'm comfortable with.

This journal entry might as well have the plea in it, too, so here goes: The JazzerThon is to raise money for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. The foundation has been around for more than 20 years, and they support medical research, community outreach, screening programs, and a host of similar efforts to fight breast cancer. They're Good People, and it's a cause I believe in. If anyone would like to make a contribution to support my JazzerThon participation, I'd be very grateful. I will need checks in hand by February 12th--send me an email (to the address in my profile) for logistical details. All contributions are (U.S.) tax deductible.