Friday, October 31, 2008

Three Things

I have three things to tell you.

1) I have a new relationship with sleep.

I’m pretty excited about it. It’s called, “don’t go back to bed after waking up to go to the bathroom at 5:30.” I tried it this morning. I got up, went potty, put my running clothes on, grabbed the leash and a very happy dog and went for a really nice, pleasant run. And no traffic! When we started it was dark, and when we got home it was daytime. The whole getting up early thing was like being a little kid in a way, only instead of waking up my brothers and sister (and having them tell me to leave them alone), there was Luna, already awake, and waiting for me. I so should have had a dog when I was younger (meaning a little older than when we had Terry)...

2) We ran in inclement weather today.

It was drizzling at 5:49 when we started our run. And when we got back at 7:06 it was pouring. But we didn’t care. It was great (those old sneaks are good for this kind of thing, plus, once you’re soaked, you can’t get any wetter)! When we got home we made water footprints all over the living room and kitchen (even without our shoes and socks on). It was awesome!

3) The Italian Rotary club likes our idea and wants to help us fund-raise.

Then I got to work early (see point one) after a large breakfast (an omelet that was so expertly crafted I had to make a bis for lunch) and there was an email from the Italian Rotary club waiting for me. They met yesterday, a week after I gave my 5-minute introduction to WHO we are (ex-Rotary exchange students) and WHAT we want to do (run a marathon, raise money for the Rotary PolioPlus Foundation). Here is a translation of what the letter said...

“Dear Karoline,
Our club is happy to participate in your project, and would like to invite you to come to another meeting to work out the details. We are also willing to write to the Governor of your District and to Rotary in Paris for hospitality. A good opportunity would be the meeting of 6 November, when the speaker will be Maestro Romolo Gessi, an orchestra director, or on 4 December when we visit the wine producer Villa Luisa a Corona, with a wine testing and a talk by a wine expert on “Wine and art”.
In the car I have the polo I was telling you about, we sold them for 35€ of which I think 20€ went to service. I will give you the exact numbers over the next few days and confirm availability.
Ciao.”

I chose the wine tasting (no offense to the maestro), and, as you can see, we are thinking about selling polo shirts to raise money (and maybe some events, too). I love this Rotary club. Here’s one reason why: the president of the club buys a pig every year, fattens it up, makes homemade sausages, and sells them (mostly to grateful club members) and gives the money to charity.

So I thought about doing that for this cause. But where would I put a pig? Guest bedroom?

5 comments:

  1. Tell the Italian Rotarian to write to the Oberlinian Rotarians, so that I can hitch a ride to Italy with my Beavis and watch him perform in May.

    What a cool club! That is so excellent that they are willing to get involved and help out!

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  2. Yeah, the whole Rotarian involvement has been quite impressive - and I think it's going to get even more so. My home district is rolling out a fundraising campaign this week. We are still working out the details of a matching challenge. Our district governor is going to put the challenge to the three countries to keep up with the fundraising - very cool.

    As far as the pig goes - Kari failed to mention that I thought Guinea Pigs might work as a fundraiser (and much easier to keep in the guest room)

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  4. Is there anywhere that the Rotarians aren't making things happen?

    Guinea Pigs? Really?

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  5. Roatarians always make it happen! And, I doubt we will be able to pull together a full-fledged guinea pig fund raiser AND train for a marathon at the same time. We may have to put that idea off to next year. WHY, do you need a guinea pig in Hawaii?

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