The Cormac MacSweeney Blog - 660News Calgary

Hello all,

For this blog entry I am going to get a little serious.

As you may know, I am Cormac Mac Sweeney with 660News. But some of you may not know that my girlfriend Melissa has Cystic Fibrosis.

It is not something that just happened, she has dealt with this degenerative disease since she was diagnosed shortly after birth. There is currently no cure for CF which is a disease that attacks the digestive, immune, and respiratory systems.

Here comes the “pulling the heart strings” part. Every day Melissa has mucus filling her lungs which means she has to take her medicine with a mask and go through physio-therapy three to four times. Because her pancreas is pretty much non-existent she has to take five to seven enzyme pills with each meal and snack just to digest her food and get nutrients. She is also susceptable to many viruses, infections etc. What would normally just be a hassle to us can end up being a two-week hospital stay for her … which recently happened for the second time this year.

The Great Strides Walk is May 25th and it raises funds for the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and I’ll be there with Melissa looking like a dork in my running clothes. This fundraiser could help find a cure for a disease that affects more people than you may realize.

http://my.e2rm.com/personalPage.aspx?registrationID=449990

This is a link to donate to my efforts in the Walk. I am not asking for much, you can give anywhere from $5 dollars to $1,000,000,000,000 (if you can afford the latter). Every little bit helps. As an example, if my 400 friends on facebook give just five bucks each we can raise $2000. Think of the difference you can make.

Melissa is and always has been a sweetheart who is not bitter about having a deadly disease, rather she makes the most of life trying to be as happy as she can be in the short time she has on this earth.

Most individuals with cystic fibrosis die young: Many in their 20s and 30s from lung failure. Think about it, just by giving up a little bit of cash YOU can help extend Melissa’s life through funding advancements in life sustaining medicine.

I have never bugged you guys about stuff like this and I probably wouldn’t if it didn’t mean so much to me. Please help, and if you want to learn more about Cystic Fibrosis visit the website www.cysticfibrosis.ca or e-mail me at cormac.macsweeney@rci.rogers.com

Also if you want to walk with Melissa and I, you can register on the same site and you’ll get to see Beesley from Calgary FM (formerly with JackFM), who is hosting the event.

Thanks,
Cormac

Yesterday we unexpectedly got word from Canada’s largest oil and gas company that it will split.

Encana will be dividing into two companies, one that focuses on oil and the other on natural gas.

This is great news for shareholders because for every one Encana stock they’ll get one stock in each new company. That means if they hold onto their stock and get past the initial start up costs, they could be rolling in the cash.

Is it good for the company though? The analysts scream in unison…”YES!” Having two specialty companies is a better route because they will be able to grow further than the divisions could under Encana.

This news is huge because it means a restructuring of one of the most famous names in the energy business and one analyst is predicting that other companies will follow suit. That could mean further changes, and by the end of it all the oil and gas sector is going to look a lot different.

The only thing I regret about all of this, is that I didn’t pick up Encana stock when the buying time was right.

After a four-day trip to Las Vegas, I’m back.

Vegas was fun with a lot of gambling, some drinking in the streets (which is legal there) and of course catching a show. In the gambling department I lost but I still had a lot of fun. Chris Bowen and I took the trip and we had a chance to check out Second City Las Vegas. That was a heck of a lot of fun (I suggest to anyone heading to Nevada) and I got up on stage and did some volunteer improve with the actors and true professionals.

The big story is from when I got back. My girlfriend Melissa surprised me with a little bundle of joy. No, no, no…She wasn’t pregnant for 8 months and 3 weeks without my knowledge; she actually bought a puppy!

She looks like a little Rottweiler but the vet tells us she is not. She’s a Beagle cross…but the other breed he’s not sure of, he’s just sure it isn’t a Rottweiler. I’ll have to post some photos, and I still owe you photos from the playoff beard days. Patience is a virtue.

On to work talk. It is never easy to adjust back to your routine when you’ve been on holidays, especially when you work on a morning show. You get so used to making your hours and doing what you want that, you dread waking up and don’t even want to go to work.

That applies for most jobs but imagine dealing with it on a morning show when you wake up at 3 a.m. That’s a complete bummer.

Well that’s all for an update I can give at the moment…stay tuned to your same bat station on your same bat website.