First the good news.  When the annual DHI conference was held in Boston, I conducted a 3-hour code class for architects (I later conducted the class for our DHI chapter.).  Public speaking isn’t my favorite thing to do, so when one of the attendees approached me before class started and said, “You’re not REALLY going to talk for 3 HOURS about CODES, are you?”, I got a little nervous.  When we conduct presentations for architects, they’re typically lunch-n-learns – 1 hour max, with lunch (and cookies!) as an incentive to attend.  We get great feedback on our lunch presentations, but asking architects to sit through 3 hours of discussion on hardware and codes was a different story.  To my surprise, about 100 architects registered to attend, they actually showed up, and they stayed until the end.  I didn’t lose my train of thought, pass out, have an “accident”, or lose my voice, so I considered the class a success.

I usually get slightly less email on Fridays than I do the rest of the week, so when I came out of a meeting last Friday and saw 35 emails on my Blackberry, I immediately expected some sort of emergency or at least several hours of work just to answer them.  To my surprise, almost all of the emails were to express congratulations for receiving DHI’s Award of Merit for the code presentation for architects.  Since then, I have received many more calls and emails about the award, and I really want to thank everyone for taking the time.  I didn’t take on the challenge of keeping 100 architects in a room for 3 hours in hopes that I’d get an award, but boy does it feel great to be appreciated!

I have been updating the presentation to include information from the 2009 codes, so if you want to spend a few hours on my favorite topic, let me know.  If you’re not located in New England, I may be able to arrange for a local instructor to teach the class in your area.  No guarantees, but I’ll try.

Now the bad news.  Well, not really *BAD*…but not the best.  You may have noticed that my posts have been a little less frequent than they normally are.  It’s not because I’ve run out of things to talk about or because I’m getting tired of blogging.  It’s because I’ve been spending a bunch of time in hospitals lately with my daughter Norah.  It turns out that her *spirited* behavior was not solely the effect of my parenting…she has hyperthyroidism caused by Graves Disease.  This week we’ll be heading to Yale Medical Center in New Haven, Connecticut for surgery, so I may not have time for much door-talk.  The silver lining to that cloud is that I should have plenty of hospital hardware photos to post in the near future.

Thanks for your patience, and if you have any photos of your own that you’d like to submit to help me create some quick posts, now’s the time!

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