If you want to see photos of our Polar Plunge, they're here. The Mid-State Sisters of Skate raised $1200 for Special Olympics.

Here's an excerpt of a message I received from the Lower Ninth Ward Village:

As many of you may know, the Village was recently in the running for a chance to win a Pepsi Refresh Grant of $250,000. Voting for this grant, whose winner is entirely decided through online and SMS based voting, ended on the 31st of January. The Village came up just 16 points shy of reaching our goal of making it into the top 100 spots which would have enabled us to start from the same position in the next round of voting. It was a hard defeat only because many of us and many of you all worked very hard getting out the vote, especially in the last week of voting. However, while we did not win, there is a strange feeling around the office; not one of defeat or sadness, but of excitement and invigoration. In the 8 days in which a concentrated effort was made to move our position to within the top 100 we, and this "we" surely includes all of you, were able to move our position from 194 to 116. That’s 78 positions! For anyone not familiar with how the voting works, since we were competing against many other grants it takes many votes from us to move even one position. Therefore, 78 positions is much, MUCH more than 78 votes. The point is: No other organization made anywhere near the huge leap in positions that we did. It was truely impressive! Hence, we at the village have walked away from this experience with a true sense of how powerful and how far reaching our community is.

We plan to reapply for this grant when it opens again in April. From what we saw this round we know we have what it takes to win. We hope that you all will find and take away from this experience the same hope and motivation that we have. We cannot stress enough how impressive the jump in position we were able to make was. Please take our sincere thank you to each of you to heart.

Buffistas, I know that jump was in large part to your faithful voting and promotion. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you, and I'm pretty sure Nora feels the same. For more info about the Village, or to donate directly to their building fund, you can ask one of us or visit their website. [link]

Thank you so much.

I have a funky request. K-Bug turns 21 in late March. I'm sending her a box full of 21s. 21 pennies, 21 small bottles of booze, and so on (still gathering ideas). So many of you buffistas have watched her grow up and have extended many kindesses.

I think it would be fun to enclose 21 birthday cards. I'd have you send them to me before early March to make sure I have them in time to include them in the box. If more than 21 of you want to send cards, that is fine too - not going to turn anyone away - I'll just send those separate from the box. If you are interested, please hit up my profile e-mail and I'll send you the details.

amyth wanted me to let people know that she's sick, so she's not responding to email right now. but thanks for checking on her!

Just a quick drop by to say CJ hasn't made it home from school. He should have been here almost 2 hours ago. Yes, I've searched any potential places. And yes, I have called in a missing person report. Some find him safe~ma would be appreciated. Though I may kill him when we find him.

He is home, safe and sound (for the moment).

Please send as much ~ma as possible to my uncle. The oncologist just told us he's got 6-12 months, and that's completely out of the blue. All of a sudden he's got nodules on the left lung, which was supposedly clean in November. We're trying to get him into Johns Hopkins for a second opinion and possible treatment. Things aren't adding up and we are not just going to accept the latest news lying down.

Whatever you can spare would be much appreciated. We're not ready to let him go without a fight.

I was planning to catch up on all the hundreds of posts I got behind on when I was sick with the flu last week, but it'll probably be a few more days before I can do that.

My brother passed away this morning, just two days shy of two months off the feeding tube. Thanks to all of you who have offered so much support and love and ~ma throughout this long haul.

I'm going to be flying directly to Islip and back, so I don't think I'm going to get a chance to see anyone in NYC this time, unfortunately. But I hope to be back soon, under happier circumstances.

(And for those of you who were following my bitching in Bitches, I'm sharing a hotel room with my other brother, who has already booked his flight, so, yay.)

My MiL has been in the hospital ICU for the past few days to be treated for an infection, but she's likely to be released sometime today. That said, she still has about two more weeks of treatments before she's out of the woods. Any spare ~ma for her health would be appreciated.

I auditioned for America's Got Talent yesterday and wrote briefly about the experience here.

(bring comments to the Music thread as I rarely peek into Natter).