The man playing chess in this picture is one of the smartest cats I’ve ever known. His name is Kaz, and he’s my late father-in-law. He passed away in the summer of 2008 after fighting brain tumors for about two years.

Later that summer, my wife found the Race for Research, a 5K fun run & walk benefiting the Cancer League of Colorado, with the proceeds being tagged specifically for brain cancer research. We signed up and participated last August. My brother Brad is a cancer survivor, and he and his wife joined us in the walk. I babbled the whole way around, which left me a little breathless, but we had a great time. And then there were free pancakes after the race! Can’t beat that with a stick.

Now is the time for the 13th Annual Race for Research 5K Fun Run and Walk. It’s going to be August 23, 2009, in Washington Park, in Denver. I’ve set up a page for family and friends that kind of explains what we’re doing and simplifies the sign-up information from the official race site (don’t get me started on the 13-year-old design of that site!).

If you can participate on that Sunday, we’d love to have you join us. A bunch of us will be walking, and I think one or two may run. If you just want to contribute to the fundraising but can’t do the 5k, there’s a convenient link included for that. And registration and donation is easier than last year, so that’s good.

We sincerely hope you can come walk or run with us!

If you can’t participate and would like to make an in-kind donation, go to this page and scroll down to the “In-Kind Donations” section: http://www.race4research.com/sponsorsdon/index.html

NOTE: The phone number that had been listed for making a donation with a credit card was the wrong number, it turns out. I have verified that the correct phone number is 303-750-4341. So call that if you’d like to donate using a credit card.

Thanks!
Paul

All proceeds from the race will be donated to the Cancer League of Colorado. Donated funds will be designated specifically for brain cancer research.

Laura’s dad died from brain cancer in July 2008. We’ll be walking to honor him and all others who struggle with this disease.

We’ll meet before the race at a designated location so that we can all walk or run together.

If you want to join our team and walk with us, please go to this page and click the “click here to join the team” button: https://secure.getmeregistered.com/homepage.php?id=1180

For those who can’t participate but wish to donate to this cause, there are instructions on how to donate by phone or mail at the bottom of this webpage. Scroll down to the “In Kind Donations” section: http://www.race4research.com/sponsorsdon/index.html

For general information on the race, see: http://www.race4research.com/home.html

Thanks for your support!

I started an art journal swap with her over a year ago. We draw or paint something in one of two Moleskines—a small sketchbook and a Japanese book—and get togther periodically to swap them and create the next work. And so on, and so on. That project hasn’t moved as fast as either of us woud have liked, I think, but to our credit we haven’t stopped and are going to make it to the ends of the journals. At some point I want to scan the pages and display them in a section of this web site.

The new project is our first photography collaboration. I was inspired by another site where two friends, thousands of miles apart, posted pictures every day to a common site, and I figured we could do that, too. Not only were the shots really good, but also the project as a whole was impressive. Melinda and I knew we couldn’t realistically commit to shooting and posting a photo every day. But we decided we could shoot and post one photo every seven days. We first talked about it a year ago or more, but we finally started a month ago. We post one photo each to our site, Every Week, on Sundays. We just posted the shots for Week 4.

We decided the first week would be portraits of each other, shot after a lunch at Panera. The second week would be self-portraits. After that, it would be a free-for-all. Melinda is a great photographer. Go see for yourself.

One of the reasons why I wanted to get this project off the ground was to force both of us to shoot more photos, to create more, and in the process I hoped we would be thinking and seeing more artistically all the time. I struggled to find my rhythm in the third week, but last week I started to hit my stride, shooting more and looking for more opportunities. The project has had the same effect on Melinda—she told me that she’s been shooting a lot this week and even had a hard time choosing just one photo to post for Week 4. I’m really excited about it, because I can see that what I had hoped would happen is actually happening.

So watch and see what the upcoming year looks like through our lenses. I will still be posting occasional photos over in my Flickr photostream, but the majority of the best of my new and old shots will go into my new photo gallery here, which is just getting underway.

I just changed where I host this blog, and in the process decided to do something different with this site overall. I took this photo one cold Friday morning as I was leaving Boise. It represents travel to me. It’s not only part of my job, but this whole blog is in transit at the moment. Expect more to change soon.