Leaves are falling and the Crabby Daddy is running

Today I had a nice late wake up at 7:30 and was greeted with temps in the low 30's in North Georgia. Not quite freezing but there is a freeze warning for tonight in Athens. I was forced to fall asleep at 11:00pm last night due to the Hampton Inn in Cornelia having lousy Internet connections again..... and of course the writer strike which made TV lousy.

I had a great drive to Gainesville Ga through the winding mountains with lots of fall colors and was able to chat with Amy for all of 15 minutes this morning wow what nice commute....! :-)

I met with the Arthritis group in Gainesville and got them started on scanning patient charts into the EMR. The practice has a brand new office and it was nice to work with this group for a few hours.

I finished in Gainesville and realized I had no clue how to get to Athens from Gainesville... Since I have cancelled navigator on my CELL phone due to SPRINT wanting to have my first born in return I was left only a low tech option of looking at a map... The horror!! So I went over to Walgreens across the street found the Map rack and glanced at it for a few seconds and saw route 129 goes straight from Gainesville to Athens. SWEET! I drove through some great leaf country to Athens Ga via Route 129. Beautiful leaves and a nice fall day with El Rushbo on the AM 640 radio. NICE.... this is turning out to be a great day....

I even had the wonderful surprise of hearing comments that the President of France had to say about how great the US is as a country. This man has it right for a change. I'm so glad the People of France came to their senses and voted in a great leader. See his comments here to the congress. And how he has worked to normalize relations after they wised up and dumped Jacques Chirac's style of opposition to anything US govt for some common sense. Way to go President Sakozy!! He is known in France as Sarko the American... He actually brought tears to my eyes as I drove listening to his kind remarks and I realized how wonderful it will be to have an Ally that gets it.

I Got to Athens and went right to the Hampton Inn Athens and proceeded to try and check in. The front desk did not allow me since it was only 2:00pm they wanted me to wait 30 mins.

I grabbed my laptop and tried to access the Internet in the lobby. BUMMER no Internet. This was not looking good. I spoke with the front desk and they were CLUELESS... They gave me the phone number for the Internet support line. Not again.... I explained that I had just gone through 3 nights of crappy, slow and nonexistent Internet and got ZERO sympathy. I let the nice lady know that unless I could get Internet I was leaving for a nearby hotel that had it.

So since they were clueless and did not even know where the access points or Internet server were much less how to reboot then or reset them I decided to call the support line. Grab a sharpie and mark this in my Calendar. A time when some country folk in a small town in North Ga actually were more computer savvy than college aged kids in a college town where you would think High speed Internet is available on the street corner....

Working with the support person I finally got the access points reset and I got Internet access after a 15 minute call. Where do I send the support bill? I decided checked in and got room 509.. High floor non-smoking away from the elevator... WOW I never get all 3..

I got some work done in the room and it was about 6:00 at this time. I figured this was a great time to go to the gym downstairs and do my couch to 5k running. Hit the gym clothes secured the IPOD and my room key to access the gym and BANG there is a woman JUST stepping on the treadmill. GREAT!! This wait is 30 mins at least,,, and she looked like she was in great shape to... So it may be longer. I was tempted to suggest she run out on the parking lot to give the guys riding by outside a treat... But I decided a workout on the Universal gym was in order. I hit the whole circuit and she was still WALKING not even jogging... I went back to my room and came back in 15 mins. She let me know she had 5 mins left so I hopped on a bike and rode to get wormed up. At this point another guy came in and it was obvious he wanted to use the one and only treadmill.

The nice lady finished and said to me.. "It's all yours handsome"... (OK so I added the handsome part) So I hopped on and started my week 2 couch to 5K. This one was a little bit of a challenge as I had had a week off of jogging and hot chicks in Hotel gyms were calling me handsome so did i even need to jog?? I of course came to my senses and started the podcast for my run.

I completed it and had worked up a huge sweat... which felt GREAT. I headed to the room and decided to change and get dinner from Applebee's which was in the parking lot.

I entered Applebees and of course had to manuver around the huge carved from wood, University of Georgia Bulldogs Mascot known as UGA.. (Uhgah), who is everwhere here in this town. Sorry but Bulldogs are UUUUUUgly... I try to get a few pics of some and post them this week.

I sat at the bar and noticed the Weight Watchers section on the menu. Hmmmm should I be good or order Ribs... I swung towards good for a change and ordered Water, onion soup and Steak and Portobello mushrooms... Total was 10 points. Sweet!! The food was great although portions were small and Applebee's just went up a few notches on my preferred restaurant list.

I got to talk to Amy early tonight... WOW twice in one day... she let me know she went jogging this morning AND after work. Man she is kicking my tail! She is already on week 3 so I have some work to do to catch up and get on the same week. Guess I'll go again tomorrow and Saturday and try to get to week 3 by Sunday.... that way I'm still only one week behind Amy.

Well nothing else exciting tonight other than work, blogging and preparing to head over to the family practice in Athens to do my final training visit with them. They went live back in the first part of September... Nice practice and I'm looking forward to seeing them tomorrow.