Adventure in Buena Vista

As part of the adventure in me trying to stay at my current place of employment, I am trying to 'diversify' some of what I bring to the table.  A recently took on the task of becoming a Mental Health First Aid instructor, meaning not only am I able to provide mental health first aid but I can teach others how to do so.  

This required me to go to Buena Vista, CO for a whole week (at the cost of my employer), participate in and pass the class.  I thought it would be a piece of cake, to pass you have to take a test and then do a presentation - you of course get graded on both and then either pass or fail.  Since I do presentations all the time I thought 'no worries': wrong! The instructors start telling us how not everyone passes, they give us a scoring card so we know what we will be graded on for our presentation, things like: "if you go over or under 6 to 8 minutes your allotted time" things aren't looking good for you buddy.  All I'm thinking is: great, I'm trying to impress my employer and might end up costing them a bunch of money and me failing the class, awesome. 

To top it all off I develop an eye infection late on the second night for which I head to the ER on the third night in Salida, 30 minutes away, driving myself wearing glasses that are a couple of prescriptions old - don't say it! I know what you are thinking cause I thought it myself too.  But, I won't keep you in suspense, eye infection and all - I passed!  If it makes you feel better, I put my contacts on to drive back down to Denver although it stung the crap out of my eye, but I like to say, better to put up with a stinging eye than not being able to see really well while driving, right?  This here, this is the case I'm building for lasik surgery...

On the other hand, I met a great group of people (most of whom I won't see again probably), was able to stick to my new eating habits (I have lost 12 lbs. since I started!!!) and had some great time to myself.  Also, I enjoyed flipping channels on the TV like a zombie all night long, something I haven't done at home in over 2 years since we decided to eliminate cable/TV from our lives, but it proved once more to be a total time suck and reminded me why I'm glad we don't have it at home.

I was really glad to be home at the end of the week, that is until I started coming down with something Q the brother-in-law kindly passed to DH who then was generous in giving it to me and am now feeling totally BLAH, upside though: the cold medicine has me so wired I was able to get this blog posting done, ah life!