Worth the wait

I'm doing this week's post a early, simply because I found a Penny-Arcade Strip just too funny to ignore. For those that don't know (I presume most of you), Penny-Arcade is a comic about video games/game culture, and every year it runs a charity known as Child's Play that gives out games, consoles, etc. to sick children in Hospitals, etc.

Now you might think that this would be a strip with limited appeal and an even more limited base of people to support the Child's Play charity, but you would be forgetting a key point: Video gamers (especially the original generation) are nerds. And as nerds, video gamers have two qualities that make them (us) perfect for such a charity: They are very passionate about their geekdom, and they have a lot (and I mean a lot) of money.

In less than a week this year, the charity had raised nearly $500,000 dollars (it is well over a $1,000,000 now), and they haven't even had the actual auction dinner yet!

To give a little bit of background, every year, Penny-Arcade hosts a dinner where they auction off items donated by big name video game companies, developers, and themselves. Last year, the creators of Penny-Arcade decided to auction off a guest-strip at the dinner. Due to the size of the readership (essentially everyone who regularly reads about video games or knows anything about the industry read this comic), this was a big deal. But the guest strip never appeared, despite a sizable chunk of change being dropped for the comic (if I recall, it was in the tens of thousands of dollars). Well, today, with another dinner approaching (and the want to auction another comic off), the strip finally appeared.

Personally, it helped remind me, as we approach the holidays, that some things are worth the wait, and that our good deeds will come back to us in one way or another eventually.

To my readers, have a Merry Christmas (this is the internet, so I don't have to be PC!), and don't forget to consider all the wonderful things we have to be thankful for, earned or not!

Appreciation

Thanksgiving and duck hunting last week gave me some good perspective on the things we enjoy in life... food, family, health.

Unfortunately for me, as is often the case when we learn a valuable lesson, this was due to reaction, rather than reflection.

For family, it was due to an unforeseen delay that prevented my uncle and cousin from joining us. Unfortunately for me, that was the least... direct example of how we often forget our good fortune:

Nothing reminds you of how much you appreciate the ease of your neighborhood supermarket and the wonders of pest control like sitting in a duck blind waiting for a small, foul-tasting bird to happen by while swarmed by a cloud of mosquitoes so thick that the buzzing drowns out conversation.

And based on how well I shoot, how often we saw ducks, and the fact that our clothing did nothing to stop the mutant vampire insects that probed us repeatedly for fresh fluids - had I been a tribesman hunting for my food, my family would have starved shortly before I succumbed to malaria.

Thank the Lord for thick, juicy meat of the Turducken and your neighborhood Publix!