And I thought I had problems.

There is so much going on right now that it's hard to post. Just like everyone else, I know, but there it is.

So I have to bring up the most important thing.

A friend of mine (he lives in my neighborhood) is going through one of the classic nightmares - his 9-year-old daughter has been diagnosed with leukemia. She is going to be in the hospital for at LEAST the next 9 months, probably a year, doing chemo-therapy.

Having a daughter myself that is a friend of this little girl, this hits just a little too close to home.

The family is doing about as you would expect - shock, anger, grief, etc. Day to day, I believe. They are resilient, and the outlook for the little girl is EXTREMELY cautiously optimistic, but that doesn't really fix the fact that it's happening.

There isn't much that I can do for them, except for putting my arm around my friend every so often to let him know that his friends are here for him.

Kinda sucks that I can't do more.

I guess this leaves the final thing - finances. Have you ever had someone in chemo? I haven't. But I understand that it's dreadfully expensive. Yes, his family has health insurance, but when you have an illness of this magnitude, insurance doesn't cover it.

So I am trying to figure out what I can do. Truly, I am trying to find out how to raise money for them through my running. Find sponsors, etc. Maybe have a 5K run where people give me $1 per kilometer. Or maybe I can roll this into the Mille Bornes project - $0.01 or $0.10 per mile or something. If I can get a TON of people to do this, I can actually raise some substantial money for this guy.

I probably should HAVE to say something like this, but OVBIOUSLY every single tenth of a penny will go straight to this family. What they use it for is their business - I don't really care. Mortgage? Great. New shoes for the other kids? Wonderful. Trip to Disneyland? They probably need it. Although I can't really see that happening either.

So things are good. Weight Watchers has changed some rules, which will help me stay on plan easier.

I will post more tomorrow, and keep you posted on my friend.

-Silas