It's Labor Day and I'm currently outside sitting on my deck with a nice breeze, watching our dog sleep in the shade while the other dog (we are dog sitting) splash around in its plastic pool.  I am battling a cold which I am pretty sure I got from either a co-worker or training partner.  Up until now, it hasn't really affected much of the weekend, but today I am feeling a bit run down.  I had every intention of training today, but I felt kind of crappy so I'll have a real off day, and get back into it tomorrow.  The rest of weekend has been nice though.  

Friday I went out to dinner for my cousin's birthday and enjoyed some nice cajun salmon. Saturday I had to work at the hospital, and I was supposed to lift, but I skipped it for a nap. Yesterday was my mothers family reunion and I went along to eat and visit with people I haven't seen in years.  It was a good time and I'm still full.  I even made some sausage and peppers which went over pretty well.  

I have five days of work left until we fly out to Sao Miguel and I'm pretty sure it will be a rough five days.  My coworker was off the past week and it was pretty busy with some potential outbreaks in hamburger (E. coli) and gripe water (salmonella).  The volume of the routine samples that came in last week were also a bit abnormal.  On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we were swamped with samples for Salmonella confirmation, Campylobacter confirmation and Vibrio.  Thursday was pretty quiet for the most part, which allowed me to catch up on paperwork.  But Friday more than made up for that quiet...

It was a literal shitstorm.  We received 8 stools for Shiga Toxin testing, another 8 stools for Salmonella Typhi testing, 29 samples for Salmonella Confirmation, 6 for Campylobacter confirmation, 3 samples for Vibrio confirmation as well as a few Yersinia and Shigella thrown in for good measure.  Tuesdays follow up work on all this stuff is going to be crazy, and I'm sure it all won't have worked correctly according to the flow charts.  Living organisms have a tendency to do their own thing and follow their own rules, which means that a portion of this work will carry over to the rest of the week.

On a training note, I had been seriously thinking of signing up for the Pan No-Gi championship which will be coming up in October.  However, looking at the IBJJF website it appears registration has been suspended do to unexpected construction at CCNY.   From the IBJJF website:

"On short notice, we were just informed that the facility is currently undergoing renovations. Even though we have the 2016 Pan No-Gi scheduled to occur on October 1st, 2016, the college is facing difficulties with the project and their officials are concerned that the construction will experience delays and not be ready in time for the event. The City of New York will not allow us to run the event if the renovations are not completed in time. We are working together with NYCC to find a solution for this matter. We will resume registration within the upcoming days."

 I'm not sure what the outcome of this situation will be, if they find a new venue, finish construction and keep the same venue or potentially cancel, I guess I'm in a holding pattern for now.