National Childhood Cancer month

September is National Childhood Cancer month, and if you haven't had the opportunity yet, take a look at the special segment on Boston.com devoted to this topic. There's a photo montage of children who have survived, are battling and have died from various forms of childhood cancer. One of the photos is of Larry Theriault, one of the patient partners for whom a fellow Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge runner runs for -- it's wonderful to see him doing so well.

Childhood cancer rates are incredibly high -- and often you see instances of pediatric cancers striking teenagers or even young adults. I've lost two adult friends to forms of cancers that are typically treatable in children, but can be deadly in adults. I run in memory of Brittany Lambert who died at 13 of myelodisplasia, Tom's nephew Bobby who died just before his second birthday from a brain tumor, and in honor of Amber DaRosa who has successfully completed treatment for leukemia several years ago.

So much more work to be done...

On of my favorite all-time actors...

Tom woke me up this morning with the sad news that actor Paul Newman passed away last night from cancer. Newman was one of my favorite all-time actors, a generous philanthropist and one of the few Hollywood marriages that has stood the test of time. Coincidence -- it was just last week that we caught The Color of Money on TV.

Happy Punctuation Day!

In honor of National Punctuation Day, please take a few moments to assess the proper use of your favorite em-dash, semi colon or period.

I had a hell of an English teacher in middle school who drilled into us the proper use of punctuation, among other grammatical rules. Some of my pet peeves:

1. Punctuation ending a sentence belongs inside the quotes, not outside, unless a parenthetical follows. Example: He said, "I can't believe it's not butter."

2. Use it's when you mean it is and its when you mean the posessive form of it. (okay, that's more grammatical than punctuation, but I digress)

3. Use a semi-colon to link independent clauses, not dependent clauses. Example: I enjoy going running when I travel for work to see new cities; however, this trip I forgot to pack my running sneakers and had to walk in sandals instead.

4. The proper form of the ellipsis is three dots. Two means you made a typo. Four is just plain wrong. Three dots, that's all it takes...

Clinton on the economy

Those that know me, know that I'm just not a fan of either Clinton. That being said, I was watching David Letterman last night in my hotel room and listened to Bill Clinton give one of the most comprehensive, yet simplest explanations yet of the current economic crisis in the US. Worth listening to!

It's amazing some of the commentary I hear -- the US economy is in its most fragile state since the Great Depression. I think of the 30s, I think of The Grapes of Wrath, dust bowls and bread lines. Today, there are so many households living beyond their means. Materialism has taken "doing without" to a whole new, rather disturbing definition.

I spent today at Habitat for Humanity and was really taken aback by some of the statistics I read about housing and poverty. The official poverty line in the US is somewhere around $19K, but if you add up the basic, most rudimentary costs for living (heat, electric, a roof over your head), you still go north of $20K. So where do these families find the money to get by? And how many middle-class families are falling further and further behind in debt, having overextended themselves over the past few years in low- or no-money down mortgages?

What a mess we've created. No wonder the rest of the world is in a panic, hoping that their economies don't lurch into a tailspin right after us!

A bout of bad luck....

Over the past few weeks, Tom and I have narrowly missed a few certainly-ugly car accidents. The usual idiots not paying attention and swerving dangerously into our lane. The guy who blatantly ran a red light and would have t-boned us if I hadn't been slow to start on my green light. And most recently the woman in Porter Square who was more interested in eating her muffin and drinking her coffee than paying attention to our car which clearly had the right away. I find these altercations annoying at best, but Tom gets downright angry, given the nasty accident he was in two years ago.

Well, our luck ran out today, although thankfully neither of us were in the car. Our neighbor's construction worker lost the brakes on his van and, given the choice between hitting our car, a brick wall, or people, choose wisely and hit our parked car. Sheered the bumper right off the front.

No one was hurt, and the aftermath is more annoying than anything else, but oh, the ironies! We were supposed to be at the Pats game today, but gave our tickets away to Tom's friends. I was supposed to have left already to meet Tom at a local restaurant to watch the game, but was puttering around the house trying to get just a few more things done. I would have normally pulled in temporarily in the alley in front of my in-laws cars, but didn't want to get a nail in my tires from aforementioned construction. Sigh....the best laid plans!

Poor Tom -- I'm flying out to Atlanta tomorrow and he gets to deal with all the follow-up!

Revisiting a favorite childhood activity: Boston Harbor Islands

Tom and I were recently approached by an organization interested in hosting a race on one of islands in Boston Harbor. We bailed out of both of our football games this weekend, citing loads of laundry and general fatigue, and took a trip out this morning to Spectacle and Georges Islands to scope things out and enjoy a day off in the sun.

When I was growing up, my father would take me, my uncle and his then-girlfriend (now wife) out boating on the weekends. We would drop the Midido (name leftover from the previous owners down in Florida) into the Charles River at the public boat launch in Watertown, travel down the river into the Harbor and out to Georges Island. I have very fond memories of tooling around the Harbor and running around the island.

It's been easily 20, maybe even 25 years since I last went to Georges Island, and Tom's never visited any of the islands, so this was a great treat. Spectacle was very cool -- open, untamed land covering a landfill. Beautiful vistas of the city and the other islands. The trail along the perimeter is just over 1.5 miles, so there are great possibilities for a fun road race here. Great investments have been made in amenities like a visitor's center, a modest eatery, and plenty of tables and benches. We had the good fortune to meet one of the Park Rangers while we were out measuring, and she gave us incredible insight as to all the island offers. A caretakers lives there year-round, and the rangers live in temporary dwellings called yurts.

To the right is Tom just ahead of me on the path walking with our measuring wheel. We got a lot of strange looks from folks on the T that morning, and quite a few inquiries as to what we were doing when we reached the island. :)

Georges Island is home to Fort Warren, a civil war era fort that has been incredibly well maintained. We stopped at the Information Center for a quick bite to eat (note to self: this late in the season, 'tis wise to bring one's own picnic lunch!), then headed inside. We couldn't resist putting Tom behind bars at our first stop!

It amazes me how accessible the fort is -- there were a few nooks and crannies that definitely gave me the creeps, and a few precarious stairwells and edges overlooking deeps wells that would make me think twice about letting a child run around on their own. Yet, this is exactly what I was doing as a child!

Our trip to the islands brought back great memories for me, and Tom couldn't help but note how he has lived his entire life near the city, yet never took advantage of the harbor islands. The ferry rate is a fair price, and you can bring your own food, games, and other beach gear and enjoy a great day out of the city.

Add this to your to-do list next summer!

We came, we directed, we got soaked....

This weekend, Tom and I directed the 9th Annual Flutie 5K road race. I haven't posted much, if anything, on this blog about our side-business directing road races. For years, we both directed races for our respective favorite causes and received quite a bit of really positive feedback, encouraging us to make this a paying gig. So much so that on a whim, Tom grabbed the url, www.racedirectors.com, and we hung on to it, even while we were busy getting married and my four years at BC working on that MBA. Once I finished, we found that the interest in actually hiring us to direct niche road races was still there, and we've been in the fortunate enough to earn contracts to direct a handful of events over the past 1-2 years.

The Flutie race is a great experience for us, and we enjoyed working with the Foundation's staff immensely. Pre-reg numbers were on track all the way until the close of online registration Friday night to easily break 800-1000 on race day, but sadly, the weather gods were not with us today. I have to say: even we were caught completely off-guard. When we got up at 4am today (yes, 4am), forecasters were still calling for scattered showers. As Tom reflected tonight, were all the showers scattered over Natick, MA? Nevertheless, we had a terrific team of volunteers and really wonderful -- and more importantly, good natured! -- runners that made for a great fundraiser for the Foundation.

Now, to dry out.....

Long sports weekend....

This year, in addition to Patriots season tickets, we decided to throw BC football tickets into the weekend mix. Those of you keeping score heard over the past year how Tom's nephew, Nick, was recruited by some great schools and ultimately accepted a terrific offer from BC. We knew it was highly likely he would red-shirt this year, but decided to go ahead and get season tickets regardless. Oddly enough, I haven't been to a BC game since easily 10-12 years ago, well before I ever went on to become an Eagle myself. We figured we were due!

We're looking at 4-5 long weekends this fall with back-to-back BC/Patriots home games. Oooph -- deep breath! Home opener looked good until the last quarter when they just started getting completely outplayed. BC is definitely missing their now-pro QB Matt Ryan. Nick (#71 in the center of the picture to the right) dressed, but stayed at the sidelines. Our seats are less than stellar, and we quickly found space sitting on a wall of the stadium where we could get a little more air on a humid day.

A brief overnight break, then we were on to the Patriots home opener. Stadium has changed quite a bit over the summer -- Patriot Place is trying to appeal to the masses. I think the boys are too hard core to try "game and a movie." ;)

At any rate, as you can guess, there we were in the end zone, busy watching Randy Moss fumble a pass from Brady, when...oh wait....why are all the trainers on the field around Brady? Oh no....you mean, Cassel? I have to give this kid credit: from where we were sitting, he received equal boos and equal cheers (although the cheers were almost pleading, "come on kid, you can do it").

Cassel or Brady, BC or Patriots, the real story was the start of the tailgating season. Just a few photos of the boys' very serious tailgate.... Hmmm..upload is slow - coming shortly!