Hello from Tampa!!

I'm here!! :) I'm on Kathy's computer, since she doesn't have wireless and she told me to make myself at home on hers (wasn't that sweet?). I don't want to upload pictures to her computer so I will try tomorrow to get a few up...wherever I end up tomorrow night (yet to be determined!)
I got to Tallahassee after a looooong day of driving at about 5 PM last night. Joyce and Zemi met me at the door. It was awesome seeing Joyce again and Zemi greeted me warmly...with a real heart-melting smile! What a beautiful baby! We visited for a few minutes then we headed out for a while. We went to the ballpark so I could meet her hubby Jason and her two boys, then us three girls went out to eat at a yummy little local Italian restaurant. We had planned to go shopping for a bit afterwards but Zemi was feeling kinda puny so we headed back to the house. I was going to do a bit of blogging...posting pictures and all...but the cable kept coming on and going off, finally going off and STAYING off, so I gave up. We talked until about 1:30 and then I CRASHED!!!
Woke up this morning, took some Advil for my headache (allergies have been HORRIBLE lately), got ready, and then we headed out. We went to Starbucks for some coffee, then hit up the brand new Kohl's in Joyce's neighborhood (it is less than ten minutes from her house and I am insanely jealous!). From there we took a whirlwind tour of a few sites in downtown Tallahassee. Tallahassee is the capital city (I didn't know that) of Florida and we drove right by the governer's mansion...cool! We didn't have a lot of time because I needed to hit the road for Tampa and we had to go to the Whataburger first! I got me a big old burger (I have photographic evidence) and dreamed of living in a Whataburger neighborhood. That big old burger filled me up...I haven't really been hungry again since.
I said good-bye to Joyce and family and headed for Tampa around 2...and would have probably gotten here around 7 but took a detour to find a Wal-Mart and was detoured longer than I intended to be. First off I had to FIND the Wal-Mart...and then it ended up being the OLDEST Wal-Mart I'd ever been in...seriously, I think it was older than I am...then had to find what I was there for (I asked for directions a lot) then had to get checked out (of course, my line was held up). Then I decided to try to find an alternate, faster route back to the interstate, which ended up being a much slower, terribly convoluted route (can we say "lost"?). That detour set me back about an hour!
I got to Tampa around 8 PM. Great timing, because it was nearly too dark for me to see the directions by that point. I got on my first ever toll road (well, the first that I remember, anyway) and found Kathy's house. Kathy is one of the co-chairs for the Tampa walk and such an incredibly dear hostess! I met her sister Rosemary online several months ago...she had her CI surgery the day after I had my second surgery back in November...and when I told her I was coming to Tampa they offered me a bed to sleep on. Rosemary is just as sweet in person as she seemed to be in her e-mails and I have felt so at home here!
Tomorrow, registration for the walk starts early, and the walk itself starts at 10 AM. I have NOT been walking...so tomorrow night I may be too pooped to blog, but I'm going to do my best! I seem to be able to blog by BlackBerry fairly well, but am having issues getting my pictures posted...seems like something always comes up. Maybe tomorrow! (and there will be plenty of them after that!). Bad news...the BlackBerry just posts to my family blog. If I do any "moblogging" I'll copy and paste here, perhaps, later....or you can go visit the family blog here for the play by play in case I'm slow! :)
OK...off to bed...it's late and we're getting up at *ack* 6 AM!
THANK YOU again to everyone that's supported me...financially and by e-mail...your encouragement has been incredible! I have had nearly 40 people to donate and we've raised nearly 1200.00. I'm a little annoyed that the website didn't list all of my donors, but found out that there are a limited number of names that that it will post, and it posts the highest donations first. I hate that...because every single donation, no matter what the amount, meant a tremendous amount to me. If I can get hold of my walk t-shirt before the walk I'm going to print everyone's names that supported me on it...and y'all can walk with me...won't that be fun?
OK...SERIOUSLY off to bed now! Love y'all! :)

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