We passed the half-million dollar mark today in the State Employee Charitable Campaign. That is a very healthy figure, and pledges are still coming in at a quick clip. I was comparing our numbers for 2005 and 2006. On the last official day of the campaign last year, we’d had participation from about 2,300 employees. (Paper pledges take an additional week to count, and online stragglers get factored in, so the final figure is always larger than what we end up with on the last official day). This year, we are still three big days from the end of the campaign, and we are already at 2,266 for the number of participants. Last year we also started early to be able to respond to Katrina and later Rita, so had more total days in the campaign. Bottom line: be proud. Our people are amazing.