ALS Walk Dinner

Quick update for the FIVER'S TEAM walkers and fundraisers:
The ALS Association of Georgia will be recognizing the Top 10 Fundraising Teams (We were #3! Woot!) at an Awards Dinner on January 15th at The Old Spaghetti Factory on Ponce de Leon Avenue in Atlanta.


Melissa and I will be there, and if any of you walkers want to join us, please select your dinner from:

Spaghetti w/ Meat Sauce

Spinach Tortellini

Breast of Chicken Fettuccine

And email an RSVP to us (ProjectFiver ^at^ Gmail.com) by Friday, January 9th and we'll forward it on. We hope to see some of you there!

Walk To Defeat ALS: Aftermath

Sorry for the late response, The past month has been a blur. Mel and I want to thank everyone who came and marched with us at the Walk To Defeat ALS, and all those who supported our walkers.

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"Cuppa Joe" (l) and Melissa and I as Frodo and Dr. Horrible, respectively.

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It was a beautiful day in Centennial Olympic Park. Started off a bit cold, but warmed up nicely just after the walk started. Many teams had great showings of dozens of people in their team shirts, but (just as Melissa wanted) we did our own thing and drew a lot of attention with our costumes. Many of the organizers loved the idea so much they couldn't stop talking about it. They especially loved the Pirate Flags flying through the streets of Atlanta.


Look at this shot... Can't you see us walking in slow motion with some hard rock song in the background?

Final Tally for Fiver's Team : $15,343.00 Raised = 3rd Place in Georgia!

This is such an incredible result. Our original goal was $2000, figuring that we used about that much in services from the ALS Association this year, so we'd be Karmically Even. But then we raised that much money very quickly, so we doubled it. Again, we met our goal and we doubled it again. Every time we raised our goal, we just kept getting more money in, like some charitable Perpetual Donation machine.

This just blows us away. There has been so much good that has been done for Melissa this year by you people, and now for ALS suffers and their families, I just don't know how to express it anymore. Project Fiver has been so successful at it's endeavors so far that I find myself looking for more good that we can do together. Let us ponder what new ideas we can come up with over the holiday and We'll see you all in 2009!

Merry Christmas from Project Fiver!

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-- All the Pictures from The Walk --

Walk To Defeat ALS: Walker's Details

Fiver's Team, the time is at hand! Saturday is the Walk, and here are the stats:

* 65 Walkers on the team
* $12,300.00 raised, Making us the #4 team in the state! Not bad for a first outing!

Walkers registered before last week should have received a packet with maps and other information. Most of it is located in this document here.

- Parking: Loads of lots will let you park daily for $8, our pal Olivia suggests the following lot, which is halfway between the Park and our lunch location:

Coming south on Peachtree St, pass Peachtree Ctr. After Woodruff Park (on left), turn right onto Marietta Street (it's Decatur St on the left here so don't let that confuse anyone). Go to Cone Street (Georgia Bar Association office is on left here); there is a parking garage on the near right corner that charges $5 for the "early bird" - getting in by 9 am will get you this rate. If you turn right onto Cone St and go to Walton Street, there is a little lot on the far left corner that charges $5 a day.

- Registration starts at 8:30 AM at the Southern Company Amphitheater. FIVER'S TEAM will be meeting by the Olympic Fountains at 9:00. Just look for the Pirates and Hobbits and Jedi. If there's another group coming dressed as Pirates, Hobbits and Jedi... then the world is just a little more awesome than I previously thought!

- There will be some musical acts performing at the Amphitheater until the Opening Ceremonies at 9:30. The walk starts at 10 AM

- Water, Pepsi, Powerade and snacks will be provided before, during and after the walk. Public Restrooms are located around the park

- Lunch after the walk : We are planning on invading the Landmark Diner on nearby Luckie Street, just off the track of the DragonCon Parade route, if you walked it. [60 Luckie Street, Atlanta, GA 30303] All are welcome to join us there or make your own arrangements. The Diner knows we're coming and will set aside the back room for us. The reservation is under "Fiver's Team"

- All Walk participants raising a minimum of $75 will receive a Walk to Defeat ALS T-Shirt on Walk Day. Every walker raising $200 or more may choose to receive a prize from one of the award levels. View the prizes at -- http://www.compet.com/alsa

If anyone has a chance to make a Sign saying "Fiver's Team", or any other catchy phrase, like "Make ALS Walk The Plank!" (thanks Christy/Kathleen), then that would help out a lot. It's been very crazy this week with a sick child, a broken wheelchair and loss of Internet & Phone for a few days. Either way, posters or not, I'm sure that we'll stick out. :)

If you need any last-minute info or can't find us, I'll be dressed as Dr. Horrible in a crimson labcoat, so I should be easy to spot. I'm pretty tall, and I'll wave my arms or something. That should do the trick in a park that size...

We'll see you all at the Walk on Saturday! I know this will be a great time for everybody.

Walk to Defeat ALS - 2 Weeks to Go!

The Walk to Defeat ALS is on November 8th, Just two weeks away!

First up: A Status of FIVER'S TEAM. We have 48 people registered to walk with Melissa and I. Our team has raised over $7,000, which puts us in the to 10 teams! This is an incredible feat, so thank you to everyone who gave and elicited support from others.

If you have not yet, there is still time to join the walk or Sponsor Melissa! Just follow these handy links:
http://ProjectFiver.com/walk
http://ProjectFiver.com/support

Second, some info for the Walkers:
Everyone who has registered, remember to register your significant others or kids that will be walking with you. The organizers need to get an accurate headcount, and this will save you the time of registering them on the morning of the event.

Saturday November 8th - Registration starts at 8:30 AM, Shoot for meeting up with the group at 9, Opening Ceremonies begin at 9:30 and the walk starts at 10. The walk takes about an hour and a half at a nice pace, and the route will bring us back to Centennial Olympic Park, so don't worry about hiking 2k back to your cars. We are looking into getting some promotional deals with nearby restaurants, but the location is full of lunch eateries. The only problem might be finding a place for the whole 50+ person team to sit down once we GET our lunch.

Melissa requests that you wear costumes if you have them, but if not, Christy, Kathleen B. and I whipped up some Team T-Shirts you can pick up for cheap at:
http://ProjectFiver.spreadshirt.com
These shirts are offered at-cost, we're not making commission on them, we just want it to be easy for people to have them.

Centennial Olympic Park:

Driving Directions

Map of Downtown Area (PDF)

Parking is about $5-$8 daily, and there's lots of parking since it's right next to the World Congress Center.
[UPDATE] - We just received an information packet in the mail with maps and more details about the walk, and everyone who is already registered should be getting one as well.

Everyone remember that once you register, you get your own fund raising web page, so send that out to everyone on your friends lists. It shouldn't be hard to get a donation of a dollar or two from people, and once you multiply that by as many people as the group knows, that amount can become really significant!

On a personal note: We are very excited to have the people from the different parts of our lives together at this event, where they can finally meet each other. Our local friends can't wait to see the costumes. We've shown our Priest some DragonCon videos, and he is very interested to know more about the people in them.

So folks, let's show them how we roll!

Walk to Defeat ALS - Join Fiver's Team!

We're back from a brief hiatus! And we've been scheming in our absence to get people involved with ALS Advocacy in our own particular... Um...

"Idiom, sir?"

Yes, Idiom! Thank you. So here is the deal:



Fiver and I have started a team for the annual Walk to Defeat ALS, sponsored by the ALS Association of Georgia. This is the big fundraiser for ALS, since we don't have a telethon, and Mel wants to put our own Geeky spin on the event:

It's common to have people dress up for the walk, but I don't think they've been inundated with full-on geek cosplayers yet! Imagine if we had whole casts of movies and shows marching ?



The walk is Saturday, November 8th in Centennial Park in downtown Atlanta. Registration opens at 8:30 AM, and the Walk starts at 10 AM. The walk isn't long, only 5k, which most can complete in an hour. Heck, the DragonCon Parade is probably more of an effort than this!

Melissa and I would really appreciate people turning out for this event. The ALS Association has been a lifesaver in these past months. They provide counseling and equipment loaning for families with ALS. They have provided Mel with a roller-walker, a stair-chair and wheelchair, without which she would have been shut in and practically stranded upstairs in the house. The people are so very nice and helpful, and they seriously need your help. Just a few people are staffed for the whole state of Georgia, and they have to drive this equipment from their Atlanta headquarters to ALS patients from Savannah to the border of Alabama-stan, and you can imagine what that costs in gas these days.

So please consider joining us in the walk, or donating to sponsor Melissa. If you know anything about us, you can bet there will be lots of fun hanging out afterwards, so it won't be just a 1-hour deal.

Join Fiver's Team and Walk with us! (Select "Fiver's Team" from the drop-down menu on the page and register)

OR:
Make a donation to Sponsor Melissa in her walk. (And remember: Talk to the HR Department at your workplaces! They often will match your donations!)

Thanks to everybody that has helped so far, and we'll have more details on the walk later.

Contact with Production

Melissa and I have been going back and forth on how to break the news, but we're just going to cut to the chase.

A Production representative has contacted us, saying "We'll be in touch when our plans for shooting are more concrete, and do our very best to assist Melissa."

To quote someone famous: "There is no emoticon for what I am feeling." Apparently your letters of support and our story have really affected them.

We did it, folks. We really did it. There is no variation on "Thank You" that would begin to express the gratitude that I owe all of you. No words can do it justice. This is something incredible that you all have helped me accomplish, that I could never hope to accomplish on my own. Melissa is just over the moon about the whole thing, it still seems like a dream.

Want to know the funny part? The first thing the guy does is apologize that they weren't in contact sooner.

SOONER? This thing has only been live for three months! This was still Phase 2 of the Project (getting a metric buttload of signatures). I figured that once we had a huge number (5000 was my ballpark figure), we would launch Phase 3 - Direct contact. By then our geek social network would likely have made contact with someone inside, who could put the petition in the right hands. And with 5000 signatures it would be taken seriously. And I had planned a timeframe of collecting this many signatures through this fall. I was considering reserving a Fan Table at DragonCon as one last push.

I expected this to take six months to lay the GROUNDWORK, and he is apologizing for waiting three months to contact us!

Apparently, I had wildly under-estimated the power of Geek Social Networking. 4200 signatures in Three Months and enough letters and emails written to convince Wingnut Films to make this a reality. The outpouring of concern is just amazing.

But this is not the end of the story. It is a beginning. PROJECT FIVER will continue. We now are on the road to the goal, and the journey has yet to be written. Filming will not begin until sometime next year. Our mission is the same: To have Melissa be a Hobbit extra in the film. We now have the company's support, but it will still be a hard road to get her there in a year. We don't know what kind of shape Melissa will be in by the time Filming starts. It will be a fight, but we will be fighting together.

Project Fiver will continue. This site will change over the next month. The Petition will be closed, and a Guestbook will be created for people to check in and send well-wishes and greetings to her. Our son, Matthew, will have this, to know how his mother lived. The Blog will continue, and we will try to use the attention we have garnered here to promote ALS Awareness and support for the ALS Association of Georgia, who has been so very good to us in our time of need.

So thank you from me, from Melissa and from our family. You have accomplished something truly incredible. Now it is our turn to rise to the challenge of it.

Stay tuned.

Gone for a weekend - 3800

Melissa and I celebrated our 10th Anniversary this weekend, so we weren't online a great deal. But when we took a look at the site, we were absolutely floored. 3800 signatures!! Words fail me, this is simply amazing. It took us three weeks to get the initial 844 signatures before we went public, and that was using up most of our friends and direct connections. Now the number of signatures jumped 600 in a WEEKEND. Thank you guys, you have no idea how happy you've just made Melissa.

Special thanks go to the incomparable PhotoGnome, The Movie Blog.com, and TheOneRing.com for all their support!