Charlotte Real Estate Agent Brian Belcher

Charlotte and Mecklenburg county have come together to issue the Fit City Challenge in Charlotte NC.

Its basic mission is to try to make people walk 5 miles a week and eat 5 fruits and vegetables a day. The idea is to get as many people moving and eating healthy so that the city's medical bills start going down instead of up.

I don't think that there are very many ways that you can slice it that this is a bad thing. Encouraging people to be fit is a great way to build community and to help people become healthy.
The more you read and think about it, the more difficult it is to be sure that you are eating healthy and doing the right things to be healthy. It's even more difficult to muster the energy and drive to get up and excercise everyday.

Many people need a little encouragement to either start or continue their exercise routine. Encouragement is also important in maintianing a healthy diet.

This looks like it is another way that Charlotte and Mecklenburg have teamed up and pooled their resources to provide services to their residents. I'll keep my eye out on this one to see if it works.

The Mecklenburg Aquatic Center is the downtown pool for the county. There are some high schools with olympic sized swimming pools already in them in Charlotte, but this serves the high schools with no pool as well as holds tournaments for big events.

It is a great pool, cool enough that the men's olympic decided to do their training there as they ran up to the Beijing Olympics. The word on the street is that Michael Phelps and the rest of the relay team trained at this complex in uptown Charlotte.

The pool is massive and is home to many of the big swim meets. I think they are a lot like high school track meets. There are a ton of people at them and they don't happen very often. The other thing is that seems like the only people who know about track meets or swim meets are the people who do the swimming themselves.

There is another big stadium pool in Charlotte at Providence High School in South Charlotte. I've never been to that one and really don't know much about it. But I think it is the only other pool that they use for swimming events in the city of Charlotte.

ImaginOn is a building in uptown Charlotte on 7th street that hosts shared events for young people. There were two competing service groups who came together to share this facility to teach children.

The public library and the childrens theater of Charlotte joined together to make this happen.

I've already posted about an event going on at the venue, but I wanted to write about what the space is all about.

It is named after Joe and Joan Martin, two people who gave to their community. Joe was an author who published two books.

The building was finally completed in 2005 after the idea was originally floated in 1997. It works on the principal that children learn in many different ways. Some can hear something and remember it, others like to act it out. Either way, it is designed to engage young children so that they can find out a way to learn that works for them.
It is probably one of the reasons that they have a workshop designed to shoot myspace photographs for kids. They try to do things that kids will like in order to get them in the building and then teach them something once they get there. It's the old bait and switch.

There was a bit fundraiser recently at the Quail Hollow Country Club in Charlotte NC for Dessert First, a fundraiser for the V Foundation - a foundation that supports cancer research.
The foundation is named for Jim Valvano, a coach at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. He took N C State to the championship and won if I'm not mistaken.

He was also struck down by cancer later.

Dick Vitale, the college basketball announcer always mentions it several times a broadcast. He supports the program by getting the name of the program out to the college basketball audience.

Dessert First, served dessert first. Then they had a silent auction of stuff, probably sports memorabilia or something and then everyone went home.

Nick Valvano, Jim's older brother was on hand to meet people and to make a speech at the program.

The Charlotte Observer posted photos of the black tie event on their website. They either sent a photographer down there or they had someone at the party take pictures and send them to them. They have posted photos of people at black tie events regularly on their website.

It is an interesting way to see who is out in the community doing what.

The Saint Patrick's day parade that I said was going to happen this weekend in uptown Charlotte has been postponed.

Bad weather has caused the parade to shift its date to next Saturday. I'm not sure that Saint Patrick would like that. Maybe he would have wanted everyone to tough it out with a parka on.

The weather here over the weekend has been difficult to accept. After a week in the 80s, someone flipped a switch and turned Charlotte into a wintery, rainy place to be.

They actually cancelled it on Friday, because they feared bad weather. They were right. The cold rain may have a lot to do with the way Ireland really is. But it has nothing to do with our sunny green idea of what Ireland should be.

I think its funny that a ton of people have an idea of what they think Ireland must be like based on parades and stories. I think they include traditional dancers in the parades too. But that really doesnt' tell you what it's like to visit the country and live there. I guess that is something that it would be nice for everyone to do, see another country, or even another part of this country.