A surprise hello from Jacksonville

Well, I certainly wasn't planning on blogging from the road. However, about twenty minutes before we left for Jacksonville yesterday afternoon, my boss at Mayo asked if I could bring my computer. As I mentioned, he has a grant due next week which always adds an extra layer of stress to his life (and subsequently mine). So, I brought JB's laptop (aka "the green machine" -- if you see this thing you'd know why), not sure if we would have wireless access in the hotel. We do, and so, while I wait for him to send me a version of the grant to edit and JB is watching Man vs. Wild (He's in the Florida Everglades), I thought I'd throw together a bit of a blog. Since I don't have access to my computer, there won't be pictures. But hopefully, my words will suffice.

We left yesterday around 2pm. JB is on neurology which is basically half-days so getting off at this time wasn't too hard. Our first stop: Crestview with our little Scrubby. They have a nice set-up there for him. They take each of the dogs out five times a day and once a day do a training session with him. I think he'll have a good time. We hope that within a year or two, Scrubs will be able to stay home by himself and someone like my friend Heather (who I watch her two six year old labs while she goes out of town) could just stop by the house periodically. But right now, he's still too young and too prone for getting into trouble and too much work to leave with just anybody. (Jodi is a saint!)

Next stop: Jacksonville. JB drove about the first 1.5 hours while I took a short nap. We then stopped for gas, and I drove the next 3 hours or so to Jacksonville. We saw Mayo Clinic Jacksonville which was a bit surreal. Here are all the same Mayo Clinic signs and logos but with palm trees surrounding them instead of snow. Weird! We also found our hotel (which we picked due to their $60 discount for military personnel) and decided to just walk across the street to a TGI Fridays for dinner instead of getting back in the car.

The highlight for dinner was meeting a family sitting next to us from Nigeria. Other than that, we were unimpressed with our Valentine's Day celebration. I usually give every waiter or waitress the benefit of the doubt, but I had a hard time doing so here. The service was horrible and the food not that much better. Not very impressed at all. But it was nice to have dinner together and just relax so we took it in stride.

We slept in this morning -- which for us is like, 7am! Then we headed to the Department of Homeland Security office to get our fingerprints. I was worried about how difficult this process who be, but it was simple!!!! The whole thing took less than an hour, they did the fingerprinting with a new "clean" system (so no black everywhere), and we were on our way in no time. It was great! We met another family adopting from China. They are doing special needs and will therefore be travelling as early as this summer. I asked JB is he wanted to reconsider special needs, but we decided again that we thought we'd like a little practice being parents before we added extra dimensions. And besides, it would take a lot of home study editing to make that change. So we'd just take the wait as it comes.

The one thing I had realized though by this point, was that we were in a different part of the country -- much more Fort Lauderdale-like in attitude and atmosphere. Suddenly, every other person I met was making a comment about how tall I was again. Folks, I can't help it. This is just so annoying to me. I realized that the comments from strangers are unique to the part of the country. In a "southern" town like the Destin area, folks are too polite to make comments. In Minnesota, there are a ton of tall people so no one makes comments. But suddenly, I return to a big city town and the comments start flying.

Now you may think I am exaggerating but let me say that between the time we arrived last night and me sitting down at this computer 24 hours later, at least five people stopped me to comment on my height. I just confirmed this with JB to make sure I was not exaggerating. They weren't extremely rude comments -- just things like, "Oh gosh, you are tall" or something of the like. My brother and I always get into a debate about this because he doesn't think these comments are rude. I don't necessarily think they are rude, but I just get tired of them. I know I am tall. Really. I really do.

Anyways, that was a tangent. Back to our Friday adventure. We spent the day touring St. Augustine. This is actually the oldest city in the entire U.S. It was very quaint and educational, and we took quite a few pictures. It's about thirty minutes south of Jacksonville. So I'll try to post those tomorrow. We had lunch at a Tapas bar which I have never been to before. It was very good and so filling that after a nap back at our hotel, we opted for a light dinner (fruit and a light sandwich for me and sushi for JB from Publix) for dinner.

We also made a stop at Super Target to check something on our registry and look at some bookshelves. While there, we ran into Gita! Now this requires a bit of an explanation so let me see if I can do it briefly.

While at WKU, JB had a guy named Ben S. that was in most of his classes with him and was a year behind him. They became pretty good friends. When JB got into medical school, he encouraged Ben to apply at Mayo. Ben was not planning on it. He was a Kentucky boy born and raised and had already earned a full scholarship offer from UK. But he decided to go ahead and pay the extra $30 bucks or whatever it is and add Mayo to his application list. To make a long story short, Ben got into Mayo and turned down the scholarship to come to Mayo! And, he met Gita, in his class, who he is now engaged to.

Needless to say, we were a bit shocked to see Gita in a Super Target in Jacksonville. For a minute, we got confused as to where we were. Suddenly I thought: am I in Minnesota? But no, she and Ben are at Mayo Jacksonville for an away-rotation. Ben wasn't with her but was supposed to get off at 8:30. So after a long talk in the towel aisle with Gita, we gave her our cell phone number and she said she'd pass it off to Ben when he got off his rotation at 8:30. We are hoping we might be able to at least chat with him if not connect for a coke or something! It'd be great to see Ben -- a taste of two of our homes: Kentucky and Minnesota.

Tomorrow morning we are going to get together with Nicole and Bay. Nicole's flight doesn't get in until 10:30 tonight and because we have to leave by noon in order to pick up Scrubs by the last pick-up time of the day, Nicole has agreed to meet us at 8am tomorrow morning -- a huge move for Nicole who is not a morning person. I can't wait to see them!!!

I'll post again tomorrow from back in Eglin.