Getting the fundraising marathon started early

Okay, here’s an update on what’s going on at TMR:

1. I will be attending the World Junior Summer Showcase in Plymouth, Michigan starting tomorrow, and I was hoping to raise some gas-and-food money as we’ve got about $50 in cash to nurse us until the end of the month right now. That’s simply not going to cover the gas from South Lyon and Plymouth for a week, watching Trey Augustine, Axel Sandin Pellikka and Anton Johansson at the WJSS.
2. After the WJSS ends on Friday, August 4th, we’ll be shifting the fundraising focus to paying for the server bills. It’s going to cost about $300 to renew WordPress and Jetpack, and there are some related business expenses of about $140 to deal with…
3. Then there’s the big news. I will attempt to attend the Red Wings’ fall prospect tournament and main training camp in Traverse City, MI, but this time around…I’m going to have to take the 81-year-old aunt with me. There’s just nobody in the family that’s going to volunteer to take care of somebody with AA’s health problems for two weeks, and at this point, it actually makes more sense to bring her up to Traverse City to make sure her medications are set up, to give her somewhere to be comfortable and be close by in case there are any emergencies, and to be able to give her the level of care she’s accustomed to.

Now this complicates the heck out of the prospect tournament and training camp for me, but I still believe that I will be able to deliver a strong product for you.

The big problem, obviously, is that the hotel bill went up by about $900 because we’ll be doing a double-occupancy, handicapped-accessible room, and that’s a real concern, but if it’s unreasonable to ask family members to take care of Aunt Annie, it’s much more reasonable to ask her to camp out in the hotel room with me for two weeks than to ask her to be on her own for that period of time.

Those are the plans on the table right now. They are numerous and difficult to fund. I don’t know what’s going to happen regarding the September trip, honestly, because we’ve had a hard time just funding what’s become a $2,800 trip, and things have become much more complicated.

But I felt that it was necessary to “place my cards on the table” now to let you know what I’m hoping we can accomplish over the next two months. We still don’t have commercials (yet) or a podcast (yet), so peer-to-peer fundraising is how we’re going to at least start getting this done.

So you know how it goes by now:

If you’re are willing or able to lend a fundraising assist, you can use PayPal at https://paypal.me/TheMalikReport, Venmo at https://venmo.com/george-malik-2, Giftly by using my email, rtxg@yahoo.com, at https://www.giftly.com. And you can contact me via email if you want to send me a paper check. I’m also on Cash App under “georgeums” (an old nickname).

I’m utterly terrified as to whether any of this will actually work, but if you believe in the content I try to deliver here, this is a difficult time of year to get through, and we can only focus on one task at a time and one step at a time.

For now, it’s about getting to and from the WJSS with a full tank of gas and some food in my belly (and the aunt’s belly, for that matter), and we’ll go from there.