Thump, thump, thump

That’s the sound of me patting myself on the back

It doesn’t happen often (as in, never before), but my fund-raiser is essentially over and I’ve pretty much surpassed anything I could have imagined.

Considering we had about a 30-day span (I’m still taking money if it is clearly earmarked toward the campaign, but the deadline was Nov. 30.) and we decided to do a mailing campaign at the 11^th hour (stuck in the mail on Nov. 19), it went very well.

Plus, my automatic match came through, so that immediately put us at the minimum we’d hoped to raise, which was $100k.

Essentially, my Zac Brown Band auction winner ponied up a total of $75k, and the Minot Area Community Foundation kicked in $50k.

But the rest of it – the part where I did all this work to raise money – netted $40,000. Well, $40,028. I’m thrilled.

So now I have to figure out whether or not to have another news conference to present the checks to the other entities (we were splitting it 45-45-10, with us getting 10).

And I have to pump out a lot more copy regarding it still and I am way behind on the newsletter.

Essentially, this thing has sucked away my November and it’s still going. Which is OK, because it’s cold outside and I need something to distract me from the weather.

I'm just really glad it's almost over and been an amazing success. It's a lot of money toward flood recovery, which is awesome.

At some point, maybe I'll get back to normal, but I'm really not sure what that is.

This week has been cool because my roommate is gone and I have the house to myself. Not that I'm throwing parties or anything, but it's just been a good week to decompress after the whole frantic pace of November.