MVP award

When I was eating my breakfast at work Monday morning, the Microsoft developer evangelist Daniel called me on my cell phone. “Have you checked your mail?” he asked and I could hear in his voice that he was smiling more than usually. “Yes, of course” I replied, “Why?”.  “You won the 2009 MVP award in ASP.NET”. 

“SAY WHAT, for reals homes? That's awesome, but I didn't get the e-mail”. He assured me I won the award anyway, we hung up and I was really happy that I won the MVP. However, I did have a problem with the missing e-mail. What if Daniel was misinformed or some other mix-up had made me overly exited on false premise. I would be devastated if that was the case, since Daniel got me all worked up. Well, Daniel reassured me a couple of times during the day about the validity of his claim and that made me relax a bit.

Still, without that e-mail I wouldn’t know for sure…

Later that day I found the mail in Outlook’s spam filter, so now it's official.

Vacation! It’s that time of year again. Fourteen days of sunshine is waiting for me in Florida. It’s my first visit to Florida and it’ll be my 13th state with 37 to go.

First stop is Miami for a couple of days. I’ve heard a lot of good things about Miami and I’m looking forward to party like it’s nineteen ninety nine there. After that Fort Lauderdale, then across the state in a rented convertible and doing some snorkelling in the various marine parks all the way down to Everglades. After wrestling with alligators for a day we’re heading down to Key West to relax, party and enjoy some water sports. If time permits we’ve talked about visiting The Bahamas for a couple of days before returning to Miami. Amusement parks doesn’t interest us much, so we aren’t going to Orlando.

The summer is long gone here in Denmark and the whether has been very depressing for the last month or so. Florida will be just what the doctor ordered.

Thinking about it, 2008 has been my most travelled year ever and I’m not done travelling yet. Here’s a recap:

February: Brazil for the carnival (1 month)
March: Fishing in Sweden (2 days)
April: Bachelor party in Poland (2 days)
June: Barcelona (3 days)
September: Florida
October: New York City (4 days)
October: London for the FOWA conference (2 days)

Besides London, all travelling has been vacation. The next problem is figuring out where to go in 2009. My dilemma when choosing a destination is that I also choose not to go everywhere else.

Do you have any suggestions for things to see in Florida?