Work sends me to Florida

You'd think going to Orlando Florida on the company dime would be fun. Let me tell you something. It is!

When we landed it was raining like crazy. Then it got REAL dark out and this is what it looked like about an hour before the tornado hit. Yeah...a tornado. Welcome to Florida!

Me and my colleagues stayed at The Peabody Hotel. Pretty swanky place. Here's a photo I took about 20 minutes before the tornado touched down. Luckily for me I brought a raincoat. As an FYI to all of you...raincoats are useless during tornados.

Once the tornado passed we were able to check into our rooms. The room was pretty nice. I had a nice view of a swamp and the bathrooms were filled with duck shaped soap....

....and the bathroom had a television. I'm assuming the t.v. was so you wouldn't miss a second of your favorite show. You know how it is when you are watching Law and Order. Sometimes you can't miss one second of the story, cause if you do you're fucked.

And here the whole time I thought having a phone that could surf the web would revolutionize my crap time. Oh how wrong was I. Let me tell you something, having a tv in the bathroom brings crap time to a whole new level. The weird thing was you had to sit backwards on the toilet to watch tv. Which was uncomfortable. Later on I figured out that the tv is for bath time and not crap time. It makes sense to me now.

I was sent to Florida to attend an event called CAMEX 2010. It was held in this huge convention center that could hold many many huge conventions at the same time. Here's a sample of what I got to learn about...

Hey, learning about the challenges and gifts of a postmodern generation is incredibly important.

It's important. Trust me.

Down the hall from my conference was this....

I was thoroughly impressed at how many people were attending this. And how far people traveled to be there. I met a guy who flew in from California to see Tony Robbins.

Down the hall from Tony Robbins was this thing called Megacon where a lot of people were dressed like this.....

Obviously photos of Megacon would prove to more interesting than Tony Robbins and CAMEX put together. During my breaks between sessions I run down to Megacon and take photos of these amazing costumes.....

These ladies made these outfits on their own.

It's Peter Mayhew! The guy who played Chewbacca in Star Wars. He's much older now and uses a cane to get around. His cane was a lightsaber.

Who you gonna call?!

I begged them to let me sit in it. They said no.

I begged her to put me in a headlock so someone could take my photo. She said no.

The guy in the weird bug suit was this 40+ year old dude.

The guy in the middle wasn't dressed at anything but insisted he be in this photo.

He then made me take this photo somewhere around 10 times. Not once did he ask me to send him a copy or wanted to see them. He just wanted me to take the photo a shit load of times. I thought Snake Eyes was gonna kick the dudes ass. Batman stands in the back in total disbelief.

Beetlejuice was awesome. He looked and sounded like the character. I'm tired of pirates. Fuck Jack Sparrow.

These two were my favorites from the show.

But I wasn't there for Megacon. I was there to learn stuff. Which I did. We had longs days of education so to combat that many of these events throw parties after the sessions end. And there were lots of parties. Lots and lots of parties. My and my colleagues got invited to a luau.

Woohoo! Coconut tops!

Dolphins would swim up to you. That blip in the water is a dolphin. The woman on the beach was actually making these stupid "dolphin" sounds and was about to tell her that she was nuts. Then all of a sudden this fucking dolphins pops out of nowhere and hung out.

My director said "who got laid?" I said "this guy".

Thankfully the weather cleared up after two days of shit weather. I managed to get out with my co-worker and my director to do a little site seeing.

Palm trees!

The view from my hotel room. Swamp.

This is me and my co-worker Karen. Neither of us wanted to have our photo taken but our director insisted we sat down next to the fountain so she could take a photo. So this is us posing for the photo under protest.

She's protesting more than me.

This is my director and Karen. Same fountain.

Fancy restaurant down the street from our hotel.

Our hotel had this tradition of ducks living in the hotel lobby. So everyday the "Duck Master"..who has one of the coolest jobs around...would march these ducks down from the top floor of the hotel, where the ducks lived to the fountain in the lobby. It's a big tadoo. They roll out this red carpet and the Duck Master gets all these kids to assist him. Tons of people show up for this daily event.

Duck Master heads off to pick up the ducks.

Here they come!

There they go!

They made it. Safe and sound. Don't feed the ducks.

That was pretty much our trip to Florida. As much as I enjoyed Florida, I was pretty happy to go home to see my daughter.

Karen chose to catch up on Brad and Angelina news.

I listened to music....

And then prepped myself for any type of emergency situations.