Who I Walk For

Since I have now started fundraising and training for this year's 3 Day in Chicago I thought I would start a post that lists all of the people that I am walking in support or in memory of.  If you have someone that you would like added to this list please send me an e-mail with their name.  Vi McGuigan - My Mother and a survivor.  She is the primary reason I started walking in the 3 Day last year and plan to continue walking. Suzie Mole(Albrecht) - A young lady from a family that lived down the street from mine growing up in Oak Creek.  One of the nicest friendliest people you could every meet.  She was diagnosed with Breast Cancer following the birth of her first child and died at the age of 27. Tery Wong - Another Survivor and a teammate I met during my first 3 Day in 2007.  Her enthusiasm for this cause and seemingly unending supply of energy helped make the 2007 3 Day an memorable experience.

 

More Storm Pictures

This is looking south from the front door

Last One

This one looks to the North. You can see the streets are not in very good shape.

Our Big Snow Storm

Just thought I would share a couple pictures of what it looks like here today. This is what it looks like in my backyard

Finally Getting Along

I promise this is not going to turn into a Cat Blog. I just couldn't help but upload this picture. I walked out of my office this afternoon and the cats were getting along so well now.

Two Cats Now

We adopted another Cat recently to keep our kitten company. They are still getting used to one another but so far they seem to like the company.

U-Verse Cool New Technology

What you may ask is U-Verse.  U-Verse is an IP TV solution that is provided by AT&T who happens to be my employer.  I have been waiting patiently for U-Verse to become available in my area and I finally got it installed this week.  I have only had it for a couple days now but so far I am very happy with it.  The product is still fairly new but from my perspective it is just as good as the Dish that it replaced.  I used to have occasional brief interruptions with my Dish because I live in the flight path into an Airport.  I don’t have to deal with that anymore.  The set top boxes are actually a little smaller than the one I had with Dish and I don’t need to worry about where I have coax anymore.  The transport for the Video to all of my TV’s is Cat5 and that is a lot easier for me to get in than Coax.  The potential is there for this to be Wireless in the future as the video stream is only about 3 Meg for an SD stream. The faster Internet is a nice benefit that comes along with U-Verse.  On my old DSL connection I was too far from the Central Office to maintain a signal above 3 Meg.  With U-Verse I now have a 6 Meg connection and they will start offering a 10 Meg connection on 2/1 and I plan to try it as soon as I can.  I try to use the products that my company sells as it just makes sense to support my employer.  It makes it a lot easier when the product actually works well and you can get excited about it.  U-Verse is one of those products for me.  I am not a TV power user so the limitation of a single HD stream at the current time really does not impact me.

What is the 3-Day

www.the3day.org  If you look to the right side of my blog home page you see a countdown that tells you how many days it is until the Chicago 3 Day.  Most of you are probably wondering what the 3 Day is so I thought I would fill you in a little.  The 3 Day is a series of walks that are held across the United States in the late summer and fall.  There will be a total of 14 3 Days this year.  Each 3 Day is a 3 Day walk that is about 60 miles over the course of three days.  The 3 Days are held to raise money to fight breast cancer. Last spring I was up late one night working on my computer much like I am right now.  I had the TV on and I saw a commercial for The 3 Day.  I thought it looked interesting and went to their website to check out and very quickly decided it was something I wanted to do.  My Mother was my motivation to do it.  My Mother is a survivor and I am glad that she is.  Hopefully by raising money to fight Breast Cancer there will be many more people like me that can say that their mother is a survivor as well.  The 3 Day raises money but is so much more than that.  It really is a very positive experience.  Going into the 3 Day I really didn’t know what to expect but the weekend was much more than I had anticipated.  It’s not just walking 60 miles to raise money.  A large part of the weekend is walking with different people and finding out why they are walking.  The stories of the people involved are both uplifting and heartbreaking as not all the stories are of Survivors. Now many of you may think that the 3 Day sounds like an event that is geared towards women and I will tell you that the majority of the participants are women.  Men are welcome and encouraged to paricipate and there are plenty of reasons for us to do so.  For one, men CAN get breast cancer.  It is not as common in men but it does happen.  Another reason is that breast cancer impacts the people we love and care about.  It can affect our wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters.  We should do what we can to help make sure that they don’t have to deal with this disease. This year I will be paricipating in The 3 Day for my second time.  Please support my walk by going to my donation page found at right in the links section.

Molly and Shannon on Christmas Eve

My daughters and our kitty on New Years Eve.

Kitty at my desk

Here is our kitty playing on my desk. I don't get much work done when he comes to visit.