Did Anyone Else Realize it's the 13th of January?

It is 12:26 on January the 13th. What am I doing up and writing a blog you ask? Good question! This answer is complex and could potentially require your assistance. How do you do this? Well first by reading this blog in its entirety. As many of you know I am organizing a book reading at the Verity club downtown Toronto. This book reading has been planned since before Christmas 2009 and everything seemed so far off in the distance. Did anyone else realize that it is the 13th of January? So as it stands so far there are 20 people in attendance for the event. Ready for the reason that I cannot sleep and am freaking out? The room holds 80 people! So I need everyone to lend a helping hand!
For those of you who do not know about the book reading that I have been setting up here are some of the details:

James Maskalyk practices emergency medicine at St. Michael’s, Toronto’s downtown inner-city hospital. He is an assistant professor at the University of Toronto, and divides his academic time teaching, as an associate editor at the open access medical journal Open Medicine, and advocating for global health issues at the University. In 2007 Dr. James Maskalyk set out for the contested border Abyei, Sudan, as a doctor newly recruited by Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders). He spent his days treating malnourished children, coping with a measles epidemic and watching for war. Worn thin by the struggle to meet overwhelming needs with few resources, he returned home six months later more affected by the experience, the people and the place than he had anticipated. Currently, Dr. Maskalyk is working with Ethiopian partners at Addis Ababa University to develop a program that will train the country’s first emergency physicians.

Dr. James Maskalyk is speaking at this event to help raise money for Beyond Borders. Beyond Borders is a service learning program that allows students in their undergraduate studies to apply their education through volunteering for 3 months. Students have, in the past, gone to: Ecuador, Belize, Honduras, Peru, Nicaragua, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ukraine, Ghana, Botswana, Malawi and Kenya. The placements can range across many activities including working at HIV clinics to teaching English or working for an environmental NGO. The program is run through St. Jerome’s University in the University of Waterloo. For more information about the program please visit: http://sju.ca/beyondborders.html.

If you have any questions about the event or the Beyond Borders program you can e-mail me: jd.bellissimo@gmail.com .

Time:
6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
6:30 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. Registration
7:00 p.m. – 7:45 p.m. Presentation by Dr. James Maskalyk
7:45 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. Refreshments and book signing

Where: Verity Club, Toronto Room
111 Queen Street East
Toronto, ON

Cost:
General Admission: $50 (a complementary book included)
Student Price: $40 (a complementary book included, valid student ID required, limited amount)

That is the event which I have been speaking on, and the event which is keeping me up until all hours of the night. I am trying to pull all of my social contacts. I would like to just take this time to thank my mother for helping me plan and to get attendance to this event. Mom, you have truly been a life saver. For everyone else who is reading this blog, please e-mail me if you are interested in attending (jd.bellissimo@gmail.com), pass the message onto someone you know who may be interested, or e-mail me and I can send you a poster to hang somewhere where people would be able to read it! Thank-you to everyone who is supporting me, it means a great deal!