Orlando

Like most licensed professionals, I have to have continuing education credits to maintain my license. I recently found a meeting in Orlando to earn these credits. To give an idea, I earned 20.5 credits in three days at the cost of $750 (over $2,500 if you include other expenses) and that is not enough for one year of license (75 for a three year period). It is probably a good thing, it forces us to make an effort to stay abreast of new things. That is good for patients. This is the lecture hall. There were 500 surgeons from 26 countries...........

The entire experience was bad. Our travel experience was the worst I ever had. I bought a package of air fare, lodging and rental car from Delta.com. I entered my card number and appeared to be approved. I was able to print off my itinerary. Later I learned that an itinerary is no good without a confirmation number. The moment I learned this important fact was about an hour before our flight left. I use "our" loosely as we actually had no tickets on that flight. And one hour before a flight leaves to Florida during spring break is NOT the time to find out you have NO tickets. We were lucky enough to fly stand-by 4 hours later. But the hotel and rental car reservations were imiginary as well. Replacement would be at "la$t minute rate$". Not checking for a confirmation number cost us a lot of anxiety, over $1,000, and nearly wrecked the whole trip.


The weather was cloudy, rainy, and about 5 degrees warmer than Spooner. Hmmmm. I got to the meeting (Renee cought some sort of bad 24-hr bug in the terminal of plane, she did not get out of bed except to throw up). I parked in the lot. I decided to leave 2 1/2 hours later to see if she was still living. I asked to have my parking ticket validated. The answer was "no, we did not contract with the hotel for that as most attendees are staying here. ( "here" incidentally, was an insanely expensive posh resort hotel who "discounted" attendees at $240 per night---we were at the the Days Inn for $30, oops, I mean $69). so I was fuming when I got to the parking attendent about having to pay for parking at a meeting that cost me $750 for tuition. That is when I found out that my 2 and 1/2 hours of parking cost me $16!! Fuming became an understatement, This is a family blog so I cannot tell you what I told her.....


This is a picture of our rental car. Parked from thenceforth discretely across the street about 1/2 mile from the conference. On a residential street. For FREE.


Being Swiss is not always easy, but one cannot change nationality...........

...........on the last day, the sun came out and the temp got all the way up to 70. I handed in my "attendence verification sheet", and promptly cut class.......

 
.....I remind the reader, it was a HERNIA conference! I had heard about how to repair hernias for two solid days. A hernia is a small surgery. Probably their coronary artery bypass conference must take a month!! Brain surgeons must LIVE in Orlando (their kids love that!) No. two days was enough. This was the resort. I was embarrassed to walk in there. I was always looking around for security. I was the only one without a tie and jacket. I needed an escort,.......to the door!.............

no, the pool was the place for me. and my book on history........

......and for Renee.................

.....We found a neighboorhood bar. They are as rare in Florida as snowmen. At last we had beer to cry in. We made the best of it.........

Uncle Hans