Meme-age

I was just tagged by Chelle:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages)
2. Open the book to page 123
3. Find the 5th sentence
4. Post the next three sentences
5. Tag 5 people

Well, the nearest book I have is my current novel in progress, Shogun by James Clavell. It's 1152 pages so the over 123 pages part isn't a problem.

"Blackthorne was dragged out of his sleep. It took him a minute to clear his head. When the fog lifted, Omi was staring down at him. One of the samurai had pulled the quilt off him, another had shaken him awake, the other two carried thin, viscious-looking bamboo canes."


I'm not sure I know 5 people to tag that didn't tag me already. So, I'll tag: Jessica, CCT, Hema, Steve, and George's Mom :)

Time to relax

I had an absolutely horrible day at work on Friday. It was nothing I could control and nothing I had anything to do with. But, it happened... and I'm not going to blog about it. Things are different at work now. Long story short, someone quit. I feel awful about it.

I had to call in replacements for Saturday at work. It went well, but felt very different. I got through it.

G and I headed out Sunday to spend the day on a boat. It was his Valentine's present. The day started our rather gloomy, but by 1pm became perfectly sunny and slightly cool. We drove out to Clearwater and had lunch on the beach. This was the view from the deck where we sat eating hamburgers under an umbrella. It was really hard to believe it was February.

The boat took off at 2pm. It was supposed to go around Clearwater Beach and show us the sights. They ended up spending 45 minutes searching for bottlenose dolphins and then taking us home. I saw dolphins a few times.. but apparently, the dolphins like to jump the boat wake so they kept circling the boat to try to get them to do that. I've seen dolphins before, even saw them randomly diving in Hawaii. I could have moved on, but the boat captain was obsessed with everyone seeing dolphins before they went home. Maybe they had some kind of money back guarantee or something. So, while, the boat tour was pretty and relaxing it wasn't really what G and I expected and I was rather disappointed.

Next time, I'll have to shell out more money and rent us a sailboat with a captain. Maybe get us dinner cooked,too. Lily told me over lunch Monday she knows where to get that done.. so maybe birthday time.

I spent the morning at work alone. There was no one to cover the shift. All of my techs were in class. They scheduled me just one patient an hour so I could do everything. I teched, answered phones, took CL orders, saw the patient, wrote receipts, the whole thing. It did make the morning go really fast! I was still melancholy. I always take it personally when people quit, even if it has absolutely nothing to do with me. Maybe I just get too emotionally invested in my techs. But I care about them and want them all to do well. (they're all in college)

Anyway, I'm going to head back to enjoying my thunderstorm. It's really nasty outside and bringing in a cold front. Well "cold" is relative, but it's going to be cold for Florida! Brr 50s tomorrow.

One.. singular sensation...

I had only one patient today. ONE !!! I'm so bored I could cry.

Thank god for the internets.

Sunshine Day!

It's way too nice outside to be inside! After three hours of cleaning, I decided it was time for a break. I trotted my happy ass outside and down the street to Cali Yogurt. Which, to those of you in NY or CA is just like Pinkberry. On a day like today, life is good... and it's made even better with blackberry & kiwis atop frozen yogurt. SO GOOD!

Tonight I have a CE dinner at Maggianos. They know that the way to get docs to show up to these things is to bribe us with free food. It usually works!

G is on to a new project. He's no longer working in Houston. The new assignment is in New Orleans. He seems happy with the change. The project is less challenging, but there's tons for him to do, none the less.

Great Urban Race: Tampa 2008

G and I just finished the Great Urban Race and had a blast! I thought y'all might want to see what we were up against. I'll post the clues in the order we did them. Not the order they were on the sheet. The major hint was.. you don't have to do the clues in order! I ran into some people who thought they had to. (Read the directions,y'all!) They give you 12 clues.. some are mandatory and you get to skip only ONE! Which one you skip ends up being crucial.

Our main goal was to plot out the course first. Sitting at the bar where we started, we used the wifi connection to look up the clues and addresses of every place we needed to hit. The strategy was the find everything close and figure out what would be the shortest route to hit everything.

Knowing we were only allowed to use public transportation, we stopped at the transit center on the way to the race to get a 1 Day HART pass. ($3 each)

We had breakfast that morning at Panera and were reading the paper. Jokingly, I told Greg we should take the paper with us because on Myspace people from past races were joking about the newspaper question. Thank God we took it. (see clues below)

The night before the race I perused the Wiki pages for Ybor City and the City of Tampa for fun historical facts (also glad I did this.. MANY of them showed up on the race)


Clue ONE

Lauren, Bob, Melissa and Don are planning their costumes for a party.Each will wear a different costume. There will be a Devil Ray, a Spartan, a Bull, and a Buccaneer.

No one will have a costume that starts with the same letter as the person wearing it.
The Spartan is a boy
The Buccaneer is a girl
Don likes Warriors
Lauren didn't want to be a Bull this year.


Take a photo with both teammates in front of the logo of the Tampa team Melissa represents

Answer: Melissa is a Bull --- this is the question we skipped.

Clue TWO: MANDATORY

Find us in the Tampa Park Plaza Playground between Scott and Nebraska. When you arrive, take one water bottle and each teammate gets a soup spoon. Fill your spoons with water from your water bottle and walk from the start cones to the finish cones to fill the Dixie cup at the finish line. You must leave the water bottle at the start each time. This will take several trips back and fourth.

This was located very close to Ybor City, but very close to the public housing projects. Greg and I headed here first since the clue stated it closed at 1:30pm and we didn't want to run into a time crunch. We ran right through the projects (feeling like we were in an episode of the Wire) and headed to the playground. We finished the challenge pretty quickly. If you took your time, you could keep almost all of your water in the spoon the entire way. This was no soup spoon either, it was a plastic spoon. There are no photographs of this because they just initialed our sheet that we had completed the challenge and off we went to....

CLUE THREE

Unscramble the following letters (the answer forms two words

THREAT EAT MAP

Take a photo of both teammates in front of the answer.



The answer to this was the Tampa Theater. It's was also located next to three other clues downtown.. all on the same street. Thanks google maps!




CLUE FOUR

Take a photo of both teammates with the Mona Lizard mural in the background.

This clue was two blocks from Tampa Theater.



Clue FIVE

Go to Westshore Pizza on Franklin. Pizzas will be waiting for you. Take a photo of one teammate feeding the other teammate one slice of pizza.

This was two blocks from the lizard mural on the same street. A very nice man eating his lunch was inundated with racers and was being very nice taking all of our pictures.



Clue SIX

Return to the finish with a candy heart that says one of the following "Be Mine", "Be Good", "Be True", "Kiss Me", or "Sweet Talk"

We weren't sure where we were going to find this. As it turns out, there was a CVS right across from the Westshore pizza so we ran in there to get a little box of candy hearts. Thankfully, G picked up two boxes "just in case" because the first box we opened had NONE of the sayings listed above. AHH!

Clue SEVEN

MANDATORY: Take a photo of both teammates and someone else forming a three person pyramind (everybody on all fours) in front of a yellow building.

OR

Take a photo of both teammates in front of a banner that says "The Lion King".

Since we had no idea where a yellow building was we opted for the second one. The Lion King is coming to Tampa in a few months and ticket are on sale. The performing arts center is near downtown on the Hillsborough River so we headed there next.



Clue EIGHT

MANDATORY: Go to the Lotus Room Yoga Studio. Enter the front door and go directly into the front room to the right. Do what the instructor teaches you. When both teammates have finished the instructor will hand you a card. Bring this card with you to the check in.

After running for almost an hour, this was a nice break. We did one breathing exercise and then one set of warrior poses. I was the only girl in the room out of a group of eight guys. I think G and I were the only ones who'd ever been to yoga. Warrior.. no problem ! We got our card, put our shoes back on and took off. We were the second group of teams to get to yoga, since the instructor could only fit 8 people into the studio at a time.

Clue NINE

Return to the finish with the answer to Friday's Tampa Tribune Sudoku.

At first I was like.. wait, WHAT!? But, then I came to my senses and realized that the answer would be in TODAY's paper. We already had that with us from the start. YAY!

Clue TEN

It consists of five fish: a redfish, a barracuda, a bull dolphin, a tarpon, and a snook. These fish, which serve to blend old Tampa with new Tampa are all indigenous to the state of Florida. Take a photo of both teammates in front of this sculpture.

Now, I run and drive by this thing all the time. It's on Bayshore Blvd. right across from One Bayshore and the Platt St. Bridge. We knew it was on the way back from yoga heading towards Channelside.



Clue 11

You must make a phone call and receive a password contained in the voicemail to properly complete this clue.

Correlate letters to numbers in the following manner: A=1, B=2, etc except 0=0

What is the name of the amateur pilot who crashed his Cessna into the Bank of America building in 2002? Take the fourth letter of his last name.

Three fortune 100 companies are headquartered in Tampa. What's the one that provides energy. Use the last letter of the missing word twice in a row.

What's the most traveled of Tampa Bay's bridges? It opened in 1959. Take the last letter of the first word.

Take the second letter of the first name of the pilot above.

The Tampa Bay Area is known as the ____ Capitol of North America. Take the last letter of this word.

Now take the first letter of the second word of the bridge listed above.

Repeat the first letter you have listed.

Take the third letter from the pilots first name.

Repeat the sixth letter you have listed.

In what year did Tampa have its only recorded blizzard ? Dial extension 70 and then the last number of this year.

Listen to the voicemail and then remember the password.

We worked this clue out on the trolley on the way from Channelside back to Ybor City. My mom googled the answers for us.

The pilot: Charles Bishop
The company : TECO
The bridge: Howard Frankland
Tampa is known as the LIGHTNING capitol of north America.

You can figure out the rest on your own.
BTW -- the password was FLABERGASTED

Clue TWELVE

MANDATORY: Take a picture of both teammates in front of a statue of immigrants while giving your teammate a high five..

OR

Take a photo of both teammates in front of a duck. (half boat/half truck)

Now, I had no idea we had duck boats in Tampa. But, I did know we had an immigrant statue at Centennial park in Ybor City. We saved this for last on our way back to the start.

Born to run

G and I place FIFTH in the Great Urban Race !!!! (Out of 90 teams) We qualified for the National Championships in Las Vegas in November. We're so stoked. I'm wondering how much better we would have done had I not had a bum Achilles Tendon !

I'll post details with the pictures and clues later...