The suggestion to "Eat a Bug on Giving Tuesday" was enough to get me to open the email. Now I'm trying to figure out how I will work a 'BugFest' into my afternoon next Wednesday. Jim Farrar has agreed to eat a pest if at least 20 people make a donation of $10 or more to UC IPM. All UC IPM donors will be invited to the special pest eating event which will take place in the afternoon on Wednesday Nov 28 in the UC ANR building. Sadly, that's all it took for me to decide that I will make a donation to the UC IPM program on Tuesday. Now if Chris and Cheryl would each make the same commitment, I would donate even more ($25, each)! But here's the catch - I want it to be an invertebrate pest. None of this weed or fungi stuff. Ideally I'd get to pick the pest out of an assortment of options.
I plan to be up at 12 am on Tuesday to make sure I benefit from all of the matching donations that UC ANR and my favorite charities have secured. The 4-H Foundation has secured an impressive $25,000 match and the President's Advisory Commission has put up a $10,000 match for UC ANR. Matches are on a first-give, first-get basis, hence my plan to get up at midnight. Somehow, I doubt I will be alone. I just need to confirm which time zone matching programs run on. Kudos go out to the donors, the Development Services team and all of their partners who helped make this happen!
I thought I was going to escape homework this weekend but Kit has other plans for me. I need to work more on my Zen statement and pitch for the Ideation workshop next week. That's ok; other than that my ‘to-do' list is pretty light this weekend (think about how to collect condition change data for various program areas, prep comments to share at next week's Veg Crop Program Team meeting, start thinking about agendas for an upcoming Western Extension Directors meeting and a mid-December REC Users Committee meeting) and it's shaping up to be a weekend without yard work. There's no Program Council in December so no need to prep for that. I can think through most of these things while working on some home projects.
No need to think more right now about eating pests; time to focus on turkey. Now that the air particles are starting to fall out, it's a bit easier for some. Hopefully everyone has a chance to get in out of the rain and give thanks for all that they do have.