Wild Strawberries

Hola! Well, here I am back from Mexico. I had the best vacation ever. It was so nice to get away from a week and to not have to worry about coming back to a project. I started the new job today and guess what? I’m already on a project……so there went that theory.

The resort where we stayed in Playa del Carmen was great. It was my first time staying at an all-inclusive resort. I would recommend it to anyone. It was so nice to get up in the morning, have breakfast then head down to the pool where we would sit all day drinking just about anything we could think of. Our biggest decision each day was which restaurant to have dinner. Such a dilemma!

I’ll go into more details of the trip in a later blog, but for now I just wanted to say it was fun, I’m back and I ended up bringing home any extra souvenir. Unfortunately, this isn’t the kind of thing you want to show off to family and friends. I apparently was bitten by something or managed to get something on me that has given me this really lovely rash on both arms. Sounds like fun, right? I have no idea what it is and I am not seeing my doctor until Wednesday. So far, it doesn’t appear to be spreading, so no trip to my friendly ER down the road.

The real mind bender here is that I have exerted strong will power and NOT gone out to WebMD to try and diagnose myself. In the past I have amused my doctors with my brilliant yet completely wrong assessment of whatever condition I may have. My last doctor actually told me to stay off the web. I am afraid that if I go out there I am going to convince myself that I have some sort of flesh eating bacteria or malaria or something equally gruesome. I talked to a pharmacist over the weekend and he thought it might be a bad reaction to a bug bite. I’m skeptical, but what the heck do I know? Wednesday can’t get here soon enough. I am losing my will power to stay off the web.

So until I can sort out the “wild strawberry” looking things on my arms, I really can’t concentrate on regaling you with stories of Mexico. I think one of them is shaped like Australia. This is my latest entertainment, apparently. Instead of seeing shapes in clouds, I am apparently doing it with the “creeping crud”.

Moving on….the other reference I will make to “wild strawberries” is my hair. Those that know me best know that when I start something new (in this case, a new job) I need other new things to go with it. I really, really wanted to put some purple in my hair, but I think Marienne would have a heart attack. So I went red instead. It’s quite bright right now, but red fades pretty fast. I took a picture so you could see it in all its glory. It’s a lot brighter than I thought it would be, but it’s just hair, right? The last time I did something like this was right before I started the job I just left. In that case, it was much worse. I thought I looked like a Strawberry Shortcake character. I wouldn’t have been surprised if you could have scratched my head and smelled raspberries. I think this looks better than that disaster.

I found out that at the end of this month I get to travel to the corporate office so it will be interesting to see how people take to the hair color. As long as it doesn’t turn pink, I think I may be ok.

And finally, here is another bit of information for you from my Who Knew? Book:

Bulls are color-blind and cannot see red. It is the bright color and motion of the cape that causes them to charge.