Start of Lent

This Lent I am making a concerted effort to focus on things that will make my life better.  I am going to try and make it to Mass more often and to concentrate on making changes that will improve my personal and professional life.  Father Pat made a good point at Mass last night during his Homily.  Lent really is a time to refocus on things that we want to make better.  There is a certain assumption that you have the foundation for whatever you want to make better but you are just not satisfied with where that aspect of your life is currently.  I will be the first to admit that I do not make Mass every week.  Too often I let other things get in the way and don't make the effort that I should.  I want to change that.  It's an important part of my life and I need to make time for it.  That in turn will help me make better choices in my life overall as I feel better about my faith which is the foundation for everything else I do.

SuperBowl Pool Fundraiser

For the last couple of weeks I ran a Super Bowl pool as a Fundraiser for my walking in the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure.  I got the idea from another team that was running a pool and I decided to try it.  All in all I think it was a good fundraiser even though I didn't sell all 100 of my squares.  There are those who would say that you can't run a pool unless the grid is filled.  I was not sure I could fill the grid so I handled that in the rules that I published when I asked people to participate.  I was splitting the prize pool five ways.  1st Quarter, 2nd Quarter, 3rd Quarter, Final Score, and First Downs.  In the event that any of these prizes was not awarded because it was for a square that had not been purchased, the money was reallocated to make the remaining prizes larger.  Well I ended up only selling 40 of 100 squares so we had lots of extra space and the scores during the game were not hitting on the squares that had been purchased.  The entire prize pool ended up going to a single winner that had the numbers for first downs.  I think this works fine as long as the expectations are set.  The Feedback that I received was that people liked it and would like to do it again so maybe I will start a little earlier next year and give it another try.