This may not interest most of you, but I know that some folks local to me read this blog too.

One of my stepbrother Dan Schooff’s best friends is Steve Shea, and Steve’s wife Sallie is in serious trouble. You can read the details after the break, but the upshot is that Sallie needs a lung transplant. Dan and his wife Alyssa, along with some of Steve and Sallie’s other friends, are hosting a fundraiser in Milwaukee tomorrow night. Of course, if you can’t make it there, you can always donate directly to the cause instead.

As I said, details are below. After that, we return you to your irregularly scheduled blather.

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Fall officially came crashing in over the weekend, and I’m missing the summer already. I like warm weather, barbecues, having the kids home from school, going to conventions, and all the other hallmarks of the summer months.

One of the best memories I haven’t written much about is the week or so I spent with my wife and kids at my wife’s family cabin up in the U.P. (That’s the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for you Midwestern-challenged folks.) It’s an old, two-room hunting shack, and when I first started going up there with my wife, we had no electricity, no phone, and no running water. It was paradise.

It’s still paradise now, even though we have electricity in now, and our cell phones work if we stand under a pair of trees on the short walk down to the lake. Ann’s uncle even installed a pump to bring wash water up from the lake. And, of course, we now have five young kids joining us—along with two teenage babysitters who make that possible.

Here’s a shot I took of the lake this past August. I use it as the desktop on my computer, and we had it blown up for a framed print on our dining room wall. Until next summer, it’ll have to do.