MM 4/26/2004

Welcome to a Hot, Hot, Hot Monday!

I love that the weather is warming up and no, 98 was not too hot for me! I love it!

There is so much to tell. I am going to start with the exciting stuff. The Operation New Release drive on Thursday was a HUGE success! We had all the major news stations cover the morning radio live broadcast, and News 10 did 5 bits being sure to run them all day and night. Several stations even ran the story the next day. I have only collected the donations from 4 Starbucks locations and the running total so far is just under 500 DVD's, and somewhere in the vicinity of 2000 CD's! We have 3 other drop-off locations, the radio station is still taking donations and then there is the Tower Records donation. I am supposed to talk to my contact to find out what he means by "two pallets" and the ongoing support of 10 new releases each week. You can go to http://www.auburnjournal.com/ to see a story that was run today in the paper. There are no pictures and that is too bad, because they used the picture of Dave in his uniform carrying Mason in the Bjorn when we were in Washington. Starbucks also made a donation of 600 lbs of coffee and will be throwing in several grinders as well! There is another $1200 needed for mailing. The coffee is just for Dave's group of about 120 men. SO, here we are with all these wonderful CD's and DVD's and now we have to get them shipped to Iraq. LET THE FUND RAISING BEGIN! We have some plans for a bake sale, just kidding! We are working on doing an auction with the radio station, the newspaper mentioned the need which produced several e-mail offers to help and of course, family is stepping up. Mostly families like me, spouses who have men and women over in Iraq are wanting to send a box or two from their personal finances. I have figured that it costs about $2 per pound to send it first class. If I send it any other way, it more than doubles the delivery time and is only a few cents less per pound. I mailed 200 DVD's today and it cost $110. I made a commitment to this project when I started it and now I need to get behind it and follow it through. Our community came through for our troops and I am not going to let these movies and CD's age in my garage while I try to figure out how to tackle this next hurdle. I will send $100 worth every two weeks until it all gets there. The soldiers are SO excited about this stuff coming, it just warms your heart to here them ask their spouse "Did the movies get sent?", "What movies did you get?", "How many can fit in a box?" So there you go, I would say this has been very successful and I am not shy to say I feel very proud.

This was a very full weekend including a trip to Reno to see Ron White, Mason's first overnight with Christina and I even managed to finagle a work out in there somehow. I hope all is well with you. Write back and tell me what you did this weekend, I love to get replies!

Love to all of you!

Kathy