Recap of March

It's amazing how quickly 4 weeks can go by without blogging. Here is a quick recap:

-Brittany and I spent her spring break in the Tampa/St. Pete/Clearwater area. The weather was great, the major thing we wanted was to go somewhere warm. We got fried the first day we were there on the beach at Sand Key. We got to see the Yankees and Pirates from Steinbrener Stadium - special thanks to the security guard that told us the night before when to get to the stadium to buy the limited number of tickets remaining. We spent a couple more days on the beach and generally tried to relax.

- The week following spring break was all about getting ready to leave for Florida MOVE. It was a short, quick week that included celebrating my mom's birthday on March 25th.

- All of that was followed by 7 days in Panama City Beach (plus a day to get there and a day to get home). A few observations:

1. I don't care what route you take, it's a long way down there and there's no good way to get through southern Alabama.

2. The quickest way to bum out a spring-breaker (specifically one down there to party) is to tell them that the herd of high school students crossing the street are heading to a "private party". They have no idea!

3. Sometimes local law enforcement gets bored - just ask the guy who pulled me over on the way home in southern Alabama because the Penske truck I was driving only had a tag on the front and "in Alabama you have to have a tag on the rear of the vehicle AT ALL TIMES" and "it must be visible from 50 feet AT ALL TIMES." Here's to packing the tools and zip strips right on the back of the truck!

4. Sometimes you have to give people more information than you want to in order to get them to do what they need to do for their safety. This was exhibited when we started rushing everyone into a ballroom to take cover during a tornado warning on Thursday morning. As the CIY staff and Southeast adults rushed throughout the motel to get everyone where they needed to be, many of the students (and some adults) were less than responsive when first asked to head to the ballroom. While I have worked very hard not to be too direct with people, when it comes to their safety I'll make few apologies (especially when I ask nicely and they either just head the other way or reply with questions about which bus their luggage goes on). At that point I decided to just shoot straight with them - "There's a tornado warning, drop what you're doing and go right now!"

It's good to be home. There have been several things that I wanted to blog about over the last few weeks, but most are now not current enough to mess with (however I've got a feeling there's a GM blog coming in light of what happened last week). Stay tuned.