Back to school

This weekend was my first "back to school" continuing education weekend. Since I'm newly licensed in the state of Florida, I only needed three hours of CE before my license expires on 2/07. Which, is pretty nice. Florida requires 1 hour of CE in AIDS and two hours of CE in preventing medical erros every two years when you renew. (Florida renews biennially, too) The law did just change, however, in that I no longer have to take the AIDS class every two years. Yay! Seriously, there's only so much you can learn about AIDS.

The hotel the conference was in was very nice. They had the LAMEST lobby/hallway set up I've ever seen though. They had wide, open hallways in the lobby and central corridors.. but then, as soon as the hallways narrowed to go to the guest rooms THAT's where they put the elevators. GENIUS! So, every time you wanted to walk down the hallway you had to shove your way through the thirty people waiting at the elevators with their luggage, bellboys, etc. It was the dumbest dumbest lay out. But, I digress. The hotel itself was very nice. The Marriott Beach Resort on Marco Island. Marco Island is a barrier island in Florida off the coast of Naples. It's about a three hour drive south of Tampa. Thanks to G's elite status with Marriott we landed a sweet, very large, ocean front king sized room. VERY pretty.

I had my AIDS class first Saturday afternoon. After class, G and I decided to head out to the pool. Bad idea. Everyone else and their dog was at the pool. There were no seats. So, we head down to the lovely white sand beach. There, the conceirge proceeds to tell us there are no seats in the shade available unless you RENT a tiki hut. (many many dollars an hour) WHAT!? I have to PAY for shade in Florida? You're kidding me. G , unfortunately, is very very white and cannot spend more than twenty minutes at a time in the sun (even with sunblock) without turning a beautiful shade of pinkish red. But, being Florida, ten minutes after we got out to the beach, our afternoon thunderstorm rolled in. At this point, G and I gave up and drove into Naples to go see a movie and have dinner.

We ended up seeing You Me and Dupree, which was cute ... but, not something I'd want to spend 10 bucks to see. Oh well. We stayed cool and had fun together , which is what's important. Naples is a little lack in good food from what we could tell. I'm sure they have good food somewhere we just didnt know where to look. So, Applebees for dinner it was.

Sunday I had my other two hour class. It was the last class of the conference and then we headed back home to Tampa. G had tons of laundry to do before he headed back to Houston again. Poor thing only got to spend two nights this week in his own bed between Houston hotels and then my conference. I'm very glad he went with me, however. I didn't know anyone at the conference except the doctor I interned with. For some reason, though, I never ran into him. We kept playing phone tag.

Next year's conference: The Breakers - Palm Beach