Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Kilted To Kick Cancer - It's Almost Time To Kilt Up

This year, I have joined the Kilted to Kick Cancer fund raising effort. Basically it's a fund raiser for prostate cancer research. While I have made several donations in the couple or few past years, I have never before participated as a kilt wearing fund raiser. I guess that was because for some reason I could never see myself in a kilt. Even though I had battled stage 4 throat cancer and kicked cancer's arse, and even though a good friend of mine has battled a few bouts with prostate cancer, I just could not bring myself to do it. Then, earlier this year, I got another big scare. The docs suspected I had prostate cancer and all I could think was oh shit not those treatments again, just lower down this time. I swear, I would never wish chemo and radiation treatments (seven weeks of the highest doses possible of the latter) on my worst enemy. Hell, I even would not have wished it on Osama bin Laden and the things I could have done to him would make you cringe. Luckily for me, the biopsy was negative. Not as lucky was my friend who had to undergo his third round of treatments for his prostate cancer. He came out of it okay but this time they did surgery to get it. That was it, those two things, knowing my good friend was suffering and the fear of getting it myself and going through hell again, were what it took to get me kilted.

Yes the darned kilt is so new it still has the tag on it.
I hope you can see, I mean business and am ready to
make the effort to once again help kick cancer's arse.
 
My legs have not seen the sun in years. That was because of a sunburn thing more so than the warning from my radiation 
oncologist not to expose myself to the sun much after he had broiled me with radiation but that has had something to do with it too. Yet, they will be getting some sun next month because everywhere I go, I will be Kilted To Kick Cancer. I am doing that with the hope that it will help me to raise funds, through my team - Team Glenn B,  for the 2015 Kilted To Kick Cancer fund raiser that takes place from September 1 through September 30, 2015.  So, I ordered a kilt, a belt, some shirts, and will be ordering at least one more kilt shortly. I will be wearing my kilts each and every day during the month of September come sunburned hell or high water (or even cold updrafts). Yeah, I know, it's not a traditional kilt but since when have I been traditional. The one I am pictured in above is one is a 5.11 Tactical Kilt, it's hard to do anything without influence from the LEO and LE Firearms Instructor spirit within me even though I have been retired for three years now. 
Regardless, isn't tactical the way to face cancer and win the battle - I think so!

As for all of you, potential donor's by way of my team, there are a few good reasons to donate. First of all is the little known fact (at least I had not known before I started donating) that prostate cancer kills as many (or almost as many - stats may have recently changed) men as breast cancer does women yet as far as I am aware does not get the same publicity nor nearly the same amount of funding.

More facts below:

Prostate Cancer Facts:
  • About 233,000 new cases of prostate cancer will be diagnosed in 2015.
  • Nearly 30,000 men will die of prostate cancer in 2015.
  • About 1 man in 7 will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during his lifetime.
  • More than 2.5 million men in the United States who have been diagnosed with prostate cancer at some point are still alive today.
  • Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in American men, behind only lung cancer.
  • About 1 man in 36 will die of prostate cancer. (Source and a good read about this all at the various links to other article in his blog about KTKC.)
It would be a good thing if we could beat prostate cancer's arse into the dirt and donating toward prostate cancer research is one way to help. A high percentage of the raised funds will go toward that research, the remainder goes toward fund raising efforts. See this link for info about how the funds were allocated in 2014.

Another good reason to donate is that you will be showing support for the effort made by those of us who will be out there in September wearing kilts and urging men to get tested for prostate cancer. Make it worth it for us to be out there getting our shins sunburned or our junk frost bitten by cold updrafts every day (September weather can be fickle).

A third reason to donate is that there will be incentives, at least if you donate through Team Glenn B.  I am planning on a prize giveaway for those who donate via my team link on the donation site (link is below). For every multiple of $5.00 that any donor gives through my team, I will throw a chance in that donor's name into the hat for some prizes shortly after the 2015 KTKC fundraiser has concluded (in other words, I will do that in the first week of October). Prizes to be announced throughout the month of September. If anyone would like to donate a prize for me to offer, please shoot me an email.

Another and maybe the most tempting reason (at least for some of you) to donate, at least through Team Glenn B, will be that if you make a single donation of $100 or more, I will dunk my junk (while kilted) for each such donation made and present video evidence of me having done so on my blog (and or YouTube and or Facebook). Yes, I do mean dunk my package in ice water. Note: dunking will be limited to one dunk per day, for any day on which a single $100 donation or more is made, regardless of the number of donations of $100 or more are made that day through my team. I figure once a day, to dunk, is more than enough. However, if a day winds up with two such donations, and the next day is absent a donation in that high an amount, I will dunk again on the second day and so forth. If figure I could take those chemo treatments along with seven weeks of radiation set at super-high broil - I can take a little cold for this cause in trying to get you to donate more.

Speaking of prizes, each person who participates as registered fund raiser will have a chance to win some truly excellent prizes that have been donated by generous sponsors. The trick there is to be among the top few fund raisers. Beings it's my first year, I kind of doubt I'll arrive at upon that plateau but I am hopeful that my efforts will at least raise a sizeable amount of donations from my family, friends, associates, and acquaintances to make a difference in the fight against this terrible disease.

I am hopeful you will help out the cause by generously donating to the Kilted To Kick Cancer 2015 fundraiser and that you will donate through my team, Team Glenn B. This is the link to the donation page  but please remember in order to donate via a team, hopefully my team - Team Glenn B, please only do so from September 1st through September 30th. Also note that, because I registered kind of late, my team name will only begin to appear on the team list commencing August 31st. What you will need to do, if you plan to donate through my team (or ay other team) is to go to that link during the month of September, select the contribution amount, click contribute, then select the team name in the checkout screen. Anyway, that's how they told me it works. if you have any difficulty in selecting my team, please hold of on the donation until you contact me and I can get it straightened out.

One last thing, I know some of you will be wondering: 'What if anything does he have on under that kilt?' Let me answer it this way: I was told that if I wear anything under it, it's no longer a kilt but becomes a skirt. You can safely bet, I don't wear skirts.

All the best,
Glenn B
 

My Apologies - It's An Email Thing

So there I was without my laptop for just over a week and a half and what was I to do but be dependent on my new smart phone for things like email and surfing the web and staying in touch via email. All seemed well, at least until today. One would think, me at least being the one, that a smart phone would be smart enough to synch all of one's emails. Sadly, that evidently was not the case with my phone and thus another black mark against ATT and now Samsung too (since it's a Samsung Galaxy S6 Active phone). I only realized today that I had not received all of my emails on my phone while my laptop was being repaired. The reason I realized that is because I received an email today, referencing another one supposedly sent to me while I was dependent on the phone, that I never received on my phone. While I was certain of not ever seeing it on the phone, I decided to check anyway. There it was among all of my emails in my inbox when I looked for it while signed on with my laptop but there it as not when I looked for it on my phone. I looked in the spam folder and in the trash folder too but it was not there at all when connecting to my email account with my phone.

I wondered if it was a glitch that involved only that one email or if it also encompassed others so, I checked further. At first glance, it would appear that in the period of about 11 days approximately 50-60 emails went unseen by me because they were never displayed when I checked my account with my schmart phone. That lot included all sorts of emails from personal ones from friends and acquaintances, to updates to various online accounts, to ones related to purchases I made, to out and out crapola spam. My apologies to anyone waiting for a reply to their email(s) to me to whom I did not reply in a timely manner due to the glitch.

All the best,
GB