‘Skate for Sully’ is happening tomorrow at 2pm at Smithfield Municipal Hockey Rink.

I want to make a last minute push for more contributions. We have received $205 dollars in contributions (thanks so much!!) so far.

Here is a news article in the Valley Breeze that tells Shannon’s story. (Excerpt below):

SMITHFIELD - When 5-foot, 1-inch Shannon Sullivan became the first girl to play varsity hockey here, in 1991, she despaired of looking dainty - so before each game she would tuck her flowing, flame-red hair into her helmet.

Her opponents cut her no slack on the ice; she remembers once being checked so hard that “I had to crawl back to the bench - I could barely catch my breath.”

Now, the glory of two high school championships is long past, and at 32, she concedes with characteristic understatement that “I’m kind of in a pickle.”

A fighter by nature, Sullivan is confronting hard times. And once again on her mind are those trademark, shoulder-length curls.

She pauses for a moment in a conversation laced with humor and composure, and then confides, “The first time I cried was last Thursday, when my hair was falling out in my hands.”

That was the private Shannon Sullivan few see as she confronts her second bout with cancer in four years - but true to form that day, she quickly reached for the positive. Her tears dried, she says, and she took control.

“I told myself, ‘Get the razor and shave it all off’ - then I was fine.”

If you have the time and the inclination, please consider making a small donation using the ChipIn widget below.

Related Links:

• She’ll Get By With a Little Help From Her Friends
• Shannon Sullivan Photography
• Do you have one of these Friends??

Here is a recap of week four of the Hundred Push up challenge (more info here):

Day 1: 22/16/16/14/37
Day 2: 22/17/17/15/34
Day 3: 25/19/19/17/33

I took my advice from week 3 and stretched out/warmed up prior to the push up sessions. Here is a chart of my progress through week 4.

The blue line indicates the total push ups for the day and the red line is the goal or minimum amount for the day. I am starting to create a little separation between the lines. Hopefully week 5 will be as big of an improvement as week 4 was.

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Week 3 took a detour and ultimately proved to be rather challenging. Here is a recap of week three of the Hundred Push up challenge (more info here):

Day 1: 20/15/15/13/20
Day 2: 22/17/17/15/29
Day 3: 25/19/19/17/22

The challenging part is that I am not stretching/warming properly before hand and I get tired and tight around the 3rd set. Mental note, stretch out and warm up.

Here is a chart of my progress through week 3. The blue line indicates the total pushups for the day and the red line is the goal or minimum amount for the day. If I am going to be able to do 100 pushups consecutively, I will need to create a consistently bigger gap between TOTAL and GOAL!

The "Total" is the amount of all sets combined for the day.

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Week 3 of the Hundred Push up challenge (more info here) took a minor detour! Day 1 went swimmingly but I attempted Day 2 during the morning and my body didn’t quite cooperate. From there the week just got away from me so needless to say I will be repeating week 3 this week!

Stay tuned for the results!

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Here is a recap of week two of the Hundred Push up challenge (more info here):

Day 1 Was pretty easy considering Day 3 of Week 1, the number of reps (in sets) was 12/12/9/7/*10. I was pretty confident I was going to crush the powerset (set 5) but only did 6 over the minimum 10. I was not as sore the day after so it seems like progress is being made!

Here was my final tally for day 1:

Set 1: 12
Set 2: 12
Set 3: 9
Set 4: 7
Set 5: 16 *

* The goal of set 5 is to due as many push ups as you can over a minimum amount (10 in this case).

Day 2 I felt really good today. It’s the first time I really excelled in the power set. The number of reps (in sets) was 16/13/11/11/*15. I did 7 over the minimum and the total push up combined was 73 which was more than any day so far.

Here was my final tally for day 2:

Set 1: 16
Set 2: 13
Set 3: 11
Set 4: 11
Set 5: 22 *

Day 3 I was lazy this week and pushed of day 3 until Sunday and it showed. I was a little tired in all of the sets and could only get 3 over the minimum in the power set. The number of reps (in sets) was 15/15/12/12/*15. So day 2 to day 3 didn’t seem like much progress as I actually did 1 less total today.

Here was my final tally for day 3:

Set 1: 15
Set 2: 15
Set 3: 12
Set 4: 12
Set 5: 18 *

So, it is on to week 3 where it seems to really pick up. The reps (in sets) for Week 3 Day 1 is: 25/17/17/15/*25 (Total is 99 push ups minimum)!! Wish me luck!

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Harrison Avenue in the South End of Boston is the place to be…on the First Friday of the month. SoWa (South of Washington) is a trendy area of Boston that is home to some very talented artists. 450 Harrison Avenue houses 15 galleries and over 50 artists studios whose sole purpose is to “promote the diversity and individuality of the artists working in this flagship space, the center of the SOWA Art District”

Attending First Friday was a very exciting experience for me. I don’t “do art” so to speak. I like what I like. But going to SoWa and seeing the artists in their environment was a revelation of sorts.  There was such a variety of art, culture, personality and ambiance.

First Friday was a great opportunity for me to meet an artist whose work I have admired for the past 3 years, Charyl Weissbach. She is an encaustic impressionist that has a beautiful mind and eye for landscape. The picture below does no justice at all for her incredible work (camera phone, meh). So I encourage you to visit Charyl’s website to see her online body of work.

Here is a list of all the artists we saw:

• Charyl Weissbach
• George Wingate, Kimberly MacNeille, Sandy Belock-Phippen
• Ryan McFee
• Debby Krim
• Timothy Craig

If you live in Boston and have even the most remote appreciation of art I highly recommend attending. The studios are open daily and also by appointment (please check with the individual artists) but attending on First Friday was quite the experience.

OK, my being awesome helps as well. Verizon’s Business DSL crapped out at lunchtime today (I was actually AT lunch and had to come back to the office, thanks Verizon!). I quickly tethered my Palm Centro to my laptop and fired up PdaNet so that we could process some orders.

Problem solved! For me, but what about the rest of the company?!? Well, a little Googling brought me to a program called Nat32 that allowed me to setup my laptop as a router for the rest of the company to use as their default gateway! I could have used ICS (Internet Connection Sharing) but you need to use the 192.168.0.0 subnet so I would have to reissue IP addresses for the whole company (servers, printers, etc).

So the takeaway of this post is that it pays to be a geek with gadgets

Happy Friday to you!