Please note the link! CLICK ON ME!

In a month and a day, this relatively sane, rational woman will be jumping - well, running, really - into Lake Champlain.

A very, very cold Lake Champlain.

See, one of the things we Vermonters do up here during the winter - you know, besides ice fishing and hockey and most of the wintery things that I generally skip in favor of hot chocolate or lattes - is raise money for Special Olympics Vermont with the Penguin Plunge.

Basic premise: you get people to donate money for you to run into a cold lake after the powers that be actually clear through the ice to give you a place to plunge. It's cold, it's wacky and it's always something that I've laughed and shaken my head about.

Until this year, because I'm, well, doing it. A group of us are going to embrace the event with the mentality that "it's something you need to be able to say you did at least once in your life." And since I'm 25, it's not going to be enough of a shock to kill me.

In theory.

The other bonus is that it's for a good cause. The Special Olympics Vermont does, of course, a ridiculous number of amazing things each year; that I have a cousin who could come to benefit from everything the organization does makes it particularly personal.

My teammates and I have set up a donation page, where you can easily support our crazy venture from the comfort of your own home/office/coffeeshop. Please help out if you can - we'd greatly appreciate the help! As you can see on the page, we need to raise at least a total of $900 in order to take plugne.

You'll be rewarded with a standing invitation to watch the festivities, stories here about the experience, photographic evidence (there's no way I'm doing this and not getting it on film) and, most importantly, my thanks.