over the fence

Many thanks to old family friend Jin Kang for his $150 contribution to the cause. I was previously $50 under my goal of $800, and now I'm $100 over.

In the ensuing weeks and months, I'll be writing more about the progress toward establishing a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, but for now I just want to say thank you to all the people who have contributed money. Monetarily speaking, I can now successfully file for exemption status, but there are still a few things I need to do in terms of paperwork and administration (a 501[c][3] is supposed to have a board of directors!).

So stay tuned.


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Marissa's miracle

Marissa blogs about her recent experience at Houston's MD Anderson Cancer Center here. In a week or so, a followup MRI will be done, and the team will see where to go from there.

It's not irrational to hope that she's in for a long-- perhaps indefinite-- reprieve from the ravages of this monster. She's at a point where it's conceivable that she might be one of the lucky few who get to walk around essentially cancer-free for years and years. I do so hope that's the case.


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$50 from the goal

Many thanks to Maven, who very kindly mailed me a money order for $100. We're close. We're close to a point where I can fill out some paperwork and really get this 501(c)(3) thing rolling.


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short week

Last week was a short week for me, since I didn't have any classes to teach last Wednesday, but this week is also short because we were all off on Monday. Feels a bit unreal.

In other news: I'm still trying to figure out how best to market my speaking gigs. Perhaps the best thing to do is to hit up the local Korean community and start there, but I suspect that the primary audience for a talk about glioblastoma and the need for proactive patient advocacy will be found elsewhere. So as the marketers would ask: who's the target demographic? If you've visited the eBay listing, you know that I took a stab at what I thought the target market was: friends and families of GBM victims. But even though GBM is the most common of the various types of brain cancer, it's still fairly rare in terms of the entire US population. I can't possibly expect to gather those scattered folks together for a series of speaking engagements.

Maybe the focus should be more on Mom and the walk. Instead of aiming directly at affected families, I need to take the personal angle-- put a face on GBM by describing Mom and what we've gone through, then talk about the walk that I'm hoping to do. Up to now, I've been assuming that the approach should be to mention the walk only at the very end of the presentation: "Proceeds from tonight's talk will help fund the upcoming walk, and will be placed in the [future] 501(c)(3), etc."

In any event, I'm looking at another short week, which means tighter-than-usual finances.


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