The three of us went up to City Park in Denver yesterday to participate in the annual Walk To D’Feet ALS. It’s the fourth year that we have done the walk, of course the last couple of which have been without our motivation: Jeff Dunn (here is the link to a previous post about Jeff). It’s always an inspiring thing to be there with several thousand people with the same hopes and dreams that you have, but it is equally as difficult to know that everyone there understands that without that cure, the disease diagnosis is a sure-fire death sentence. 

As the race was about to begin, they reminded us of an interesting statistic: every 90 minutes someone in the US is diagnosed with ALS. Also, every 90 minutes someone in the US dies from ALS. Lou Gerhig’s Disease is about as efficient of a killer has it comes. It’s one of the struggles of the ALS community as they try to raise awareness…that the number of people with the disease effectively never increases. There really aren’t the long term ‘survivors,’ there isn’t a remission, there aren’t promising treatments, and there isn’t a growing population of people with it. It’s strange that the Walk was on the same weekend as the annual Race For The Cure – where Denver has the largest participation in the nation. The attention, scope, and hype is lightyears apart, but the need and deservedness is no different whatsoever. 

Jay, Karen, and David did the walk with us. A few other friends were there as well but we were unable to meet up with them. Cyrilla and Tanner had a wedding to attend this weekend in Kansas, but raised over $200.00 even though they weren’t going to be at the actual event. We saw people in all phases of the disease and in each of them we saw Jeff. It’s a tough reminder of his absence, but a good reminder of the work that is happening to try to prevent loses like that for other families. 

PS – Jay and Karen took some pictures, so when those get sent over I will post them.

So my new computer arrived on Thursday (a new Apple MacBook), and things haven’t gone as smoothly with the migration as originally anticipated. Apple has this little process using a firewire connection between the computers to move all of your data and information (including photos, e-mail, web settings, music, etc) right into their respective places on the new computer. A couple of buttons, wait a couple of hours and it is supposed to be done and you are now off and running. 

Or so it is advertised. I hooked everything up and the migration started as expected. So I went to bed (since it was supposed to take 5.5 hours). I woke up to see that the migration had experienced some sort of problem in the middle of the night and stopped working about half way through the process. When I tried to get it going again in the morning…the new computer didn’t recognize that the old one was connected. So I called tech support, and proceeded to spend the next 2.5 hours working with them on the phone. The bottom line is that somewhere in the migration process (when I was on the phone with tech support) the old computer experienced a major problem and would not reboot. I panicked. Ahna panicked. I said words that I probably shouldn’t say – and lots of them. It wasn’t the music or the e-mail or the programs….it was the pictures. Yea, I know: I should have backed them up before the process…but I hadn’t done that since early summer (before Ezra). 

When I was placed on the phone with a specialist, he told me that the situation was “dire.” I panicked more. Ahna matched the uptake in emotion. But after about 30 minutes of working we were able to get the old computer to reboot, and I was able to get the photos off of there and moved over (kind of…that’s a longer version of this story). I was happy with the progress and went back to the old computer to get more stuff onto the external hard drive…..but nothing happened. As it stands right now, the old computer doesn’t even recognize that there is a hard drive on the computer: no operating system, no memory, no information. I slept okay last night knowing that the important stuff was moved over, but unfortunately not everything was moved. Example: I didn’t get Photoshop moved over, so I have to wait until the new one ships at the end of November (there were plans for a new header on the blog, but I think that will have to wait). 

Perhaps the biggest thing not to get moved over was my e-mail address book. So, I ask a favor: please e-mail me with a quick ‘hello’ so I can get everyone’s address back. 

Part two of this e-mail: a quick review of Coldplay today. I downloaded their newest single (out a few weeks ago) because I thought it was a fairly catchy tune. I also took the time to listen to most of the rest of their new album with the possibility of purchasing that as well. Coldplay is one of those odd bands that are able to appeal to both the pop crowd as well as the stuck-up music crowd (probably where I reside). 

When I finally listened to the song a couple of times I came to the following conclusion: they are trying way too hard. Don’t get me wrong, the song is still worth listening to, but it is way overworked….which is the same impression that I got about their last album and the songs on the newest one. The expectation and their popularity is catching up to them in a big way, and they aren’t creating the original, raw music that made them popular in the first place. 

Their not overworked in the vain of Oasis, but they feel a lot like the late-nineties albums from U2: just trying too hard to recapture some of the things that made them important to begin with. Albums like those often produce a radio-worthy song or two, but normally fall really short on all other accounts…just like the recent work from Coldplay. They need to find themselves again and get back to the pre-Gwyneth days of making some noteworthy tunes. Till then, we will just have to hope for a song that reminds us of what Coldplay can be. 

Speaking of getting back to the way that things can be, this post is the first on the new computer. I hope that things can get back to the ease of the last computer soon…..

Shana Tova means “Happy New Year” in hebrew…and as we celebrate Rosh Hashanah this season with Ezra for the first time, we are reminded of how great of a year it has been. Since I had to work yesterday, we went to services on Monday night up at Hudson Gardens. We have been attending services with an informal community serviced through Judaism Your Way for the past couple of years, and have really enjoyed the perspective and inclusivity that we gain with them. 

This year we continued a new tradition for our family (done once before, about 4 years ago) and went out for an Italian dinner on the first evening of the holiday. Don’t ask where it came from, because I don’t know…but several years ago my aunt Rena was visiting from Israel and we did it then. So Monday night we continued it as a larger family…with more visitors from Israel. Two of my Mom’s cousins are in town from Israel for this week while they are on vacation together, so we all went to dinner and the service. 

During the next week or so we are supposed to start reflecting upon the last year and all of the good and bad that we have done. The week ends with Yom Kippur next Thursday, and before then we are supposed to ask for forgiveness for anything and everything that we might have done during this past year that didn’t set well with our family and friends. Since I won’t have the time to contact each of you individually (sorry, I know you understand)…we are going to do a modern blog-inspired ‘forgiveness blast.’ So here we go: read the earlier part of this paragraph and hopefully you say ‘okay.’ That’s it. If you are still reading this, I assume that we are cool.