Last year, I got beat by three different Olympic medal winners in a 40 hour period. Olympians don’t become Olympians without beating people on the regular, but it’s unlikely to happen to a portly, twitter-addled, forty-one year old like me.

This year, you have a chance to help me get clubbed by even more of the best and most

This is my team with the amazingly talented Val Sweeting. Val isn’t returning this year, probably because she’s still tired from yelling at me.

talented athletes in curling. Curling, as many of you know, is a game dominated by finesse, agility, power, grace, yelling, and when I’m involved, beer. Most nights I don’t contribute much to those first four characteristics, but I’m pretty good at the yelling and beer.

However, at the Four Seasons Curling Club’s Lupus Spiel, I yield my yelling prowess to one of the many elite skips for a good cause. So yeah, by donating to my team and the Lupus Spiel, you are literally paying someone to yell at me for 6-10 hours.

You are probably thinking to yourself, “But Joel, I want to yell at you all the time and that’s free.”  Yeah, well you’ve had your chance and didn’t, do you?

Anyway, enough with the long lead. Lupus is a terrible disease that attacks the immune system and can affect nearly every part of the body. According to the Mayo Clinic, here’s a list of the possible symptoms (and since no two cases are identical, it makes it even harder to diagnose):

•    Fatigue and fever
•    Joint pain, stiffness and swelling
•    Butterfly-shaped rash on the face that covers the cheeks and bridge of the nose
•    Skin lesions that appear or worsen with sun exposure (photosensitivity)
•    Fingers and toes that turn white or blue when exposed to cold or during stressful periods (Raynaud’s phenomenon)
•    Shortness of breath
•    Chest pain
•    Dry eyes
•    Headaches, confusion and memory loss

At least 1.5 million Americans suffer from Lupus, although that number may be even higher. The impact is most acute in women of childbearing age (15-44), but Lupus can attack anyone.

Your donation to the Lupus Spiel will help fund Lupus research at the Mayo Clinic. Any amount will be greatly appreciated and help researchers tackle this awful disease. Ten, twenty, or thirty dollars can mean a lot.

You can donate here: https://philanthropy.mayoclinic.org/LupusSpielUSA. If you can put “Ingersoll,” or “Team Ingersoll,” or that “Weird Guy from the Internet” in the “Honor of” box it would be greatly appreciated. The teams who generate the most donations will get their pick of the most elite skips/yellers in the event.

And remember, you can’t spell Fundraising without fun and the d, so here’s your chance to help me put the D in the Lupus Spiel.

Thanks!