To Infinity and Beyond, Etc.

At 7:34 last night, I reached my fundraising goal for Team in Training thanks to an extremely generous donation from Stephane Clare, aka The Real Dawn Summers. She just turned 25 again and must have gotten a lot of birthday money — as well as one of the best birthday presents a New England Patriots and Tom Brady fan could ever get (short of a chance to vanquish Giselle in a duel and then win his hand in marriage.) Seriously go read her birthday post to see what she got for her birthday. Even if–as a rational human being–you despise Tom Brady and the New England Patriots, you’ll find the post funny and touching.

So yes, I reached the goal of $2,350 on the nose.

But meeting some arbitrary goal is not what’s important here.

No, what’s important is that my coworker Natalie is beating me like a red-headed stepchild* in terms of fundraising. And, sorry, but this cannot stand. So you all need to break out your wallets, email your friends, scrounge through your car seats and couch cushions and come up with — wait, let me check her page — $717. THAT’s what’s important!

Wait! What? No. That’s not what’s important. Of course not. The money we raise via TNT funds important work done by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

I know that might seem vague. Perhaps you visualize the money just being scraped into a big pile and spent on purple shirts and running coaches and perhaps some flowers and toys for sick children and adults. No. LLS doesn’t fuck around. The money is used to BEAT cancer. Literally. Consider these specifics:

“Since its founding in 1949, LLS has invested more than $814 million in blood cancer research. We fund more blood cancer research than all other voluntary health agencies.

An LLS-funded researcher developed Gleevec, a pill for Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia (CML). Now, more than 95 percent of newly diagnosed CML patients survive more than five years with a good quality of life. LLS was also instrumental in the development of Velcade, a targeted treatment approved for patients with multiple myeloma and mantle cell lymphoma.”

And that’s because of people like you donating to the cause. So, if you’ve given, pat yourselves on the back. You deserve it.

If you haven’t, go sit in the corner and think about what you haven’t done. Then donate! If you like me, donate to my page. If I’ve offended you and you really want to get back at me, then donate to Natalie’s page. That’ll show me! Or donate to Maureen, who just signed up. Or Elisabeth, whose been busting her ass at practices and sometimes runs with a stroller full of babies (okay, two babies, but you push two babies in a stroller while running and tell me it’s not FULL of babies). Or even my boss, Ad Age Editor Abbey Klaassen — and if you attach a note to your donation suggesting I need a raise, I’m not going to hold that against you.

But don’t donate to Shareen! I’m still ahead of her in fundraising and I’d like to keep it that way. I can live with second place, but third would just kill me. Okay. Fine. You can donate to Shareen. Or you can donate to the Crain Communications team page and spread the love around.

And thanks again!

*As always, no offense to red-heads, stepchildren or red-headed stepchildren.