Jon Stuart is brilliant

This is the video clip of Jon Stuart ripping apart the Crossfire hosts. A must see!

New Boss

Today I got my 4th boss in 4 months. That doesn't sound exciting, but it is. We had one director leave, 2 interims, and now we finally have our new Executive Director. We are off to a good start already. The best part is she doesn't like her really cool, huge, wrap around desk ... so I get it! Woo hoo!

11/3/05 update - we don't have the $ to buy the boss a new desk so we are all stuck with the old ones. Oh well.

AIDS Walk

The AIDS Walk was 9 days ago, but it was so sureal that it's taken me this long to put my thoughts together. It was a rollercoaster, but turned out great. Now, I'm really excited for next year and starting to plan already. Mark you calendars: 10/06/06!

When I took the job at PPF, I was asked to be on 2 committees. Through a series of unfortunate events, we lost 3 key staff, and 3 people who were supposed to be running the thing. I stepped up to run the event since we had no one better. Even though I've never run a major event or been to the walk, I was still the most qualified person in the room. That should tell you a lot.

It's really easy to pull of the basics. We had (meager) files from past years plus some institutional memory to help out. The key was using the one major technique I learned at PIRG. You guessed it, phone banking. I put together a list of past sponsors and then called them until I reached them. This yielded $29,000 in sponsorship - half of what we raised on the entire walk in 04. Then I put together a list of past walkers and called them. Nearly 600 people agreed to walk and we got about 400 to show up. With the grassroots fundraising we did, plus the board pitching in we raised close to $125,000 (so far). Last year we raised half of that.

Next year is going to be great!

Kat

She's only temporary. I promise. We are fostering a cat who was rescued from Hurricane Katrina only a week ago. I get to name her, so she's Katrina. "Kat" for short. Now we have a Kat, a Kitty, and a Sweetie. However, I repeat, she's only here for a month. She's skinny, but not starving, and amazingly well adjusted. She's more chill than any other cat I've introduced to my 2 little monsters. Again, she's only here for a month.

Kat update: She's ADORABLE! And ADOPTABLE! She's having a great time playing with anything she can find, ignoring my cats' hissing, snuggling... I'm guessing that she's only a year old because she's so small and so playful. Who wants her?