Viva El Run! Viva El Fund-Raising! An Update.

Good afternoon, everyone. I figured I'd take a moment's break from the Derek Jeter and Babe Ruth for Sam Tuivailala Trade Rumors post I'm writing to fill you all in on how the fundraising is going.

I'm as pleased as punch to report that it's going great. Over 60 people have donated $40 for El Gallo shirts, many of them more than that, and as a group we're up over $4200 On top of that, I've had many generous offers to help cover the costs of getting the shirts printed.

It's looking like I will be able to get the shirts customized. They'll all have the same design, of course, but I'll be able to do white, powder blue, and maybe some 3/4 arm length white and red shirts. Kids' sizes should be available as well. Lil_Scooter93 is going to help me with organizing all the orders (THANK YOU), so expect an email from her or me in the coming weeks to make sure we get the right kind of shirt for you. We'll close orders August 1st, I'll have them printed shortly thereafter, and I'll get them in the mail, likely with CSchepers' help (THANK YOU) I suspect they'll arrive at their destinations by mid-August.

Aside from the shirts, Hazel will run several blind auctions for some items he and I have, as well as a couple of things the community has donated. If you have anything you'd like to donate to auction off for CardsCare, let me know.

And of course once fundraising is done entirely at the end of August, we'll all drag our blogging butts out there and do the run, and you can expect a report about that too. Expect me to be a lot slower this year than last! Our runner Scott Arnold thinks he can win it, though. No pressure. Oh, and if you'd like to join us at the run, feel free to make up a second team over at the Cardinals Care 6K website. We had two full teams last year, and it was a blast.

I'm hoping to reach at least $5000, and it looks like we'll have a good chance at that. It would make $15,000 raised over three years by the VEB community, which is something special. I have no words. You all are great. (THANK YOU)

There's no Cardinals baseball tonight, but there will be some tomorrow and on most days after that for a while. I'll have something to say about that in the morning. Viva!