I've lost a whole month!

I got on blogspot today for the first time in awhile and looked at my last post. I was stunned to realize that a month had gone by; some readers have gotten email from me and some (thanks for your hospitality, Pam!) have actually even seen me, but I've never been on hiatus so long without being able to attribute it to writers' block. No block here, just unbelievably busy. Some of what I've been up to:

Dallas

I was in Dallas the first week of October on business. I got a chance to meet, in person, Jennifer, who works for me in our Dallas offices. She's been out having her son Luke, and back and forth every day to the neonatal nursery, since Luke was born 10 weeks early. It was great to meet her and her mom, and I was speechless at the efficiency of the hospital, and the way in which tiny little Luke was developing rapidly. Jen texted me today to tell me he might be able to come home next week! It is great news, since I believe they originally thought he might not even be home at Christmas.

My job there was outplacement counseling for 12 people in our office whose jobs were being eliminated. It was a hard task. The people were all wonderful and it is my hope that they are already succeeding at finding new jobs. I also had to run health fairs at both of our locations there. What a great couple of offices and extremely wonderful people I met. It was cold and rainy in Dallas that week, and I was extremely lucky to be able to meet Pam for dinner near her home. The two of us cleaned up steaks and all the fixin's and got caught up on the state of our busy lives. I had a hard trip home - scheduled to arrive at 11:30 pm on Friday, after a long week, I got stuck at Hobby in Houston, where Southwest had to twice replace the plane that was to take me to Tampa. I got home, exhausted, at 2:15 a.m. I'm too old for this.

Back in Tampa

Naturally, I came down with a bug, and stayed home one day to try to fight it off. No luck, it turned into a sinus and ear infection, with only one day left before the Clearwater jazz festival. Since I had a good friend coming in to enjoy it with me, I went to a walk in on Friday, obtained the requisite antibiotics, and skipped the Friday night concert with Chris Botti to get some much needed sleep. We had a great weekend near the beach and saw the Neville brothers, watched a lot of football and had fantastic food at the nearby Conch Republic (my favorite restaurant along the beach) along with mountains of great breakfast food. We stayed at a delightful B & B that has separate small houses for each of its guests.

Check it out and stay here sometime, we were in the Caretaker's cottage:

http://www.parkcircle.com/

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and the one and only Conch Republic:

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http://www.conchrepublicgrill.com/

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Be sure and let me know if you're coming!

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Flu Shot is a Swear Word

*Back in Tampa, at work, we had three more health fairs, and were supposed to have 3 flu shot clinics. As it turns out, the corporate vendors can't get enough of the seasonal flu vaccine and had to back out of their contracts with us. 315 disappointed people will now have to go out and try to get them somewhere else. We had a lot of miscommunication over the events and it hasn't turned out very well. It sure colored my perspective of work this week.

In the ashes of all that, it is our open enrollment season for benefits, and we'll spend the next 4 weeks getting everyone signed up. Costs, as in most companies, are going up a lot. I will also be traveling selling our healthcare plan to Federal employees over the month of November. My first health fair for them is on November 3, at the Veteran's Hospital in Tampa, but I expect to be on the road a couple of times for that as well. Given that, I'm going to try and get my own flu shot next week, now that the sinus infection has cleared up.

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Football

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Football is kind of a bust here this year, with the Bucs having what might be their worst year ever. Nevertheless, I'm enjoying a lot of college ball on Saturdays, and pulling for New Orleans to get to the Superbowl this year.

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Books and Books and More books

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I've had a good reading run, felling "The Hidden Man" by David Ellis, a thriller, digging through the new AS Byatt book, "The Children's Book" (and every book by Byatt is a historic event!), finishing "The Girl Who Played With Fire" (fiction book of the year), catching a new Dick Francis, a new Faye Kellerman, a new Chelsea Cain and getting ready to read the new Anita Diamant and the publisher's proof of "Pops" the Louis Armstrong autobiography from Amazon. Also, I bought "Nine Dragons" by Michael Connelly, and am trying to keep it at arm's length and not "gobble it up".

So, now you're caught up with me and I'll try to do the same on all your blogs!

quid