August 31, 2000 --11:34 PM
EST
 Another evening at home and what are we
doing? Other than still listening to records, that is? (Roger Waters and
Rolling Stones tonight.)
Well, of course, he's obsessing
over his planes and sanding bits of plastic and painting eeny dots on to tiny
console panels. For awhile I was sacked out on the futon going over NF training
and fundraising stuff. We both forgot to call my FIL because it is his 62nd
birthday today.
Training is fine -- we just
started the new schedule this week. I have to cover 72 miles this month. This
amuses me because backwards that's 27, which is my birthday. Yaaaaay! I'm
thinking we ought to BBQ and have the fam over. Make everyone wear a Power Puff
Girls hat! I have to get invites and invite them over. Coax Dad into lending me
his big grill.
Fundraising? There I'm starting to
get paranoid and I'm probably driving poor
Adrith
crazy by now with my worries. I can't help it though, because every week it's
another little mailbox drama. Will I get a report or not? Will I have gotten
any new donations credited to my race number? If Adrith and I don't make our
minimums to guarantee our race numbers, how will we even get to race?!
Yaaaah!
I always get reports on a Thursday
for some reason. So today I practically bouncing off the walls waiting for the
afternoon post to arrive. "NF! Pleeeeeaaaase be something form NF!" I
kept chanting. Nope. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Making it 3 weeks since the last time I
got a report.
I did get a nice card from my
friend Candy who is back from her vacation in Alaska, but she's not NF! Great
to hear from Candy, but she's not NF! Where is any news from NF? Ok, I
did get something from NF -- more posters to hand out. But that's not
the NF stuff I want! I want a budget report! Yaaaaaah!
Adrith and I need to make it to
$4000 to get to go. $5000 is a nicer number and it's our ideal, but definitely
at least $4000 to get to go. Ok, so we have $1000 down. We need to make another
$3000.
I'd been trying to scribble out
ways of approaching this so I could have a tangible goal to shoot for. Anita
from NF tells us about 25% of the forms that go out actually come back with
some kind of donation to the charity. Ok, fine. I'm assuming someone who
doesn't know us at all would give $5 at the most. So now Adrith and I have a
goal for September -- to get 2000 donor cards out there between the two of us.
The logic being...
25% of 2000=500
cards.
If 500 cards come
back with even just $5 a pop, that's $2500.
$2500 + $1000 that
we already have is $3500.
I'd be able to handle it a lot
better when I get absolutely no news from NF if we were sitting at $3500 rather
than $1000!
I know people are more apt to be
willing to donate to things like charities around Xmas, but I am totally
writing off December as any kind of serious fundraising month. The race is
January 7th for goodness sakes. People need to have time to mail back the
cards. And everybody knows the postal service gets really swamped in December.
And I don't want to spend December in one long anxiety attack wondering if
we'll make it or not -- $3000 in one month is too huge a leap when you
don' t have millionaire friends. I'd have even more of a freakout than I am
having now. So while it's nice, I won't hold my breath. I'd much rather get to
December knowing we had less that $500 to go! I want to have a nice Xmas, not
still wonder if by the next week I'll be racing or not!
Which leaves us with November,
October, and September. Three "real" months. Can we raise an average
of $1000 a month? Sure as hell gonna try! It's a lot better than lumping it all
up close to the end!
Meanwhile the song running through
my head? "I'm paranoid, I'm paranoid, that everybody's coming to get
meeee...."
I better have something next
Thursday. I might have to hurt the mailman otherwise. Poor guy.
~Astrophe
 
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