snooooooow daaaaaaay
Yesterday it was 45 degrees F and GORGEOUS. I barely wore my coat, we tooks the dogs for a walk, Mom pointed out the greenish tinge to the brown dead grass.
This morning.
Me: *bleary-eyed, wanders into kitchen* *glances out the window* OH SHIT.
Because it's snowed. It's snowed enough to cover the quickly growing (and now frozen) lake in our backyard, which means that everywhere on the roads there will be glare ice covered by an inch of fluffy nothing, and TDG is driving me in today.
Mom called on her way into Eagle River--half way between us and Anchorage--and said she was absolutely parked on the flats.
Me: Oh, okay. We'll just go around the flats.
Dad: *looks at me*
Both of us: HAHAHAHA.
Because there is no other road besides the one that goes through the flats. Okay, I take that back, there is ONE road that could maybe help you bypass the worst of it, but that road? Goes through the MOUNTAINS. WE ARE VERY SHORT ON ROADS.
Also on the radio the traffic report guy is having a feild day, so when TDG pulls up we talk and I make the exec decision that there is no point in me going in today, I won't make it in time for either of my classes.
Pros:
- NO TDG
- No death by boredom and/or car accident
- Can make gyzym 's matzo ball soup documentary!
- Can write like hell on Penny's Spring Fling a Thing fic
- Can finally finally finally re-upload Poptarts and Sex Ficmix like I promised *facepalm*
Cons:
- Cannot give speech on Misha Collins today. Woe. :(
AND LO, BECAUSE SOME OF YOU SEEMED SURPRISED THAT HE IS AWESOME, I HAVE COPIED SAID SPEECH INTO THIS POST.
.
“Anyone know how 2 apply for stimulus money? I do want to do something to help the economy. If one of u finds an application I’ll fill it out.” It’s hard to believe, but this tweet, attached to a picture of President Obama lounging in a chair with the caption ‘My Stimulus Package-Oh yeah, you KNOW you want it!” started an organization that has raised over a hundred thousand dollars to help Haiti recover from its devastating earthquake in 2010. The man who tweeted? Misha Collins.
Unless you’re a die-hard fan of CW’s hit TV show Supernatural, you’ve probably never heard of Misha Collins, the man who plays an Angel of the Lord on Friday nights at 8 PM. So today I’ll tell you a little about Misha, talk about all he’s done for Haiti, and what he plans to do with help from his fan-run fully-fledged non-profit organization, Random Acts.
Born Misha Dmitri Tippens Krushnic, Misha Collins worked briefly in the White House under the Clinton Administration after studying social theory at the University of Chicago. He toyed briefly with the idea of politics as a career, but found it to be too boring, so he started an educational software company and took acting/modeling jobs as a way to support it. Eventually he decided software really wasn’t for him, and he pursued acting full time. In 2008 he landed the role of Castiel, Angel of the Lord, and the rest as they say is history.
His work as a philanthropist, however, didn’t fully start until 2010. Random Acts began as a sort of half-joke, a website created for the purpose of obtaining US Government stimulus money for non-profit minion initiatives. However, when this proved to be a rather difficult plan to carry, the group soon morphed into a privately organized charity group, made up entirely of fans dedicated to Supernatural. They now work with volunteers on five different continents, and encourage people of all ages to do good works in the world.
In August of 2010, Misha urged his ‘minions’ to go to jesusfoodsex.org-since renamed therandomact.org-to pledge any amount of money for his Run, Misha, Run campaign. By running 52 miles Misha was able to raise almost 85 thousand dollars for Random acts, three Haitian orphanages, and flood relief efforts in Pakistan. In September he started his Pony Up campaign working with Unicef, and raised more than $30,000 just by asking fans to donate in $8 dollar increments. Last summer Misha and Random Acts organized a group of volunteers who went to Haiti to rebuild an orphanage and a dental clinic in Jacmel, bringing with them 1600 tools which they used to supply a carpentry school they also helped start.
Most recently Misha started the Hope to Haiti Project which will fund a green multipurpose community center. This center will feed and house some of Haiti’s hungry and homeless children, educate the children of Jacmel, and it will serve as a microlending center. The project will also construct a sustainable fish farm that will provide a reliable source of protein for the children living in the community center.
The coolest thing about this project of Misha’s is the way it’s set up-the first 40 people who can each raise $5000 in donations to help Haiti will have the opportunity to fly to Haiti and help build these centers with Misha Collins, along with actors Matt Cohen and Jason Manns. On top of everything else, %15 of donations will go to relief efforts in Japan.
In a world where TV celebrities cling tight to their money as proof of fame, Misha Collins has rallied his fans and their enthusiasm for Supernatural and turned it into a force for good in the world. A guy who has a running joke on twitter about his laptop being powered by a pony on a treadmill, Misha Collins is bringing much needed relief to Haiti, a country still in desperate need of our help.
Idon't know anyone specifically who is hoping to raise enough money to go (I was going to pimp a friend of a friend but it looks like she met the quota! \OOO/) but if you or someone you know is trying to go, drop me a line and I'll pimp you instead! :DD
P.S. Also, Random Acts is not all about Haiti--Misha apparently gave flowers to some strangers in France and gave a bicycle to some people resting in a park. ALSO ALSO, Skills-based volunteering, Or, How to save the world without getting your soul trapped in a box, also known as Random Hacks of Kindness (yes really) is looking for computer programmers/software engineers to put in touch with disaster relief experts to identify critical global challenges and develop software to respond to them. Most importantly, as Misha says, they have an awesome name.
*stumbles down from totally ripped-off soap box*