Nerd Carolling Thanks You (final total)

So Nerd Carolling has come to an end. We were really happy with the results!

We had hoped to raise $100 from our two days of singing.

We made that in the first night.

After 5 nights of carolling, (3 more than we had planned thanks to an amazingly positive response) we raised...

$505.58 CAD

Sarah and I made the donation last night to Child's Play. People have also been giving online donations and telling us about them. So our real grand total is

$565.58 CAD

Thank you so much to the people who got excited and sent us around to a variety of people. You started a chain reaction that got us sent to so many different places in the city and got the word out further.

Thanks to Sarah and Emily for putting in their time and singing voices to making this possible.

A huge thank you to Jonathon Coulton (jonathancoulton.com) and The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society (cthulhulives.org) who said we could use their music and basically made the whole thing possible. They have really great music, if you haven't done so already you should check them out.

This was a really fun project and we hope to be able to do this again next year!
Merry Christmas

Debate and nerd carolling

Ok so I was realizing that I'm not really letting my nerd flag fly. I mean how can I be a plain nerd if I don't talk about nerdy goodness? So first let me say that I judged debate last week and it was awesome! I had a wonderful time and got to see so many people and chat with them in a very open space. Ran into a guy (thankfully not literally) who was in my physics class in first year. It was really good to see him. He's now substituting at my old high school, funny in that small city way.

We had a really good time judging and listening to all the debaters. There were a few really hilarious moments. One in particular was a kid saying "Am I right?!" realized what he had said and followed up beautifully with "Yes. I. Am." Simply perfect. Sarah had a really great moment where a 14 year old kid clarified something for everyone: "Now I'm not a scientist...." yeah, we guessed that.

An excellent night and got me really pumped up for my real project that I wanted to talk about.

Nerd Carolling.

Sarah and I did this a few years ago but I was off the continent last year so it had to wait. Basically this is a simple concept that requires way more explanation than I expected. We (Sarah, Emily -when she gets back- and I) go around to various houses and sing to people. The people we sing to have either given us money or someone else has given us money to sing to that person. Like sending a singing telegram. We're singing nerdy songs, some to the tune of christmas carols and some that just need to be sung because they're so amusing. The money we collect is going to Child's Play Charity (http://www.childsplaycharity.org/)

We thought it would be a nice thing to do to encourage people to donate to help sick kids have something fun to do. We emailed Jonathan Coulton and The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. They both said we could use their music. Very exciting!

So our first day of singing starts tomorrow... er later today. I can't wait! I hope to get some recordings and put them up on youtube. Now just to find my camera.