Michael and Abby Lee: 2008-09-28

Well where do we start... We were cancelled at the hospital in San Diego. What does that mean you might ask! Well it simply means, Abby and I are out of a job, we are working our last night at Phoenix Children's Hospital, we head to NY on Friday for 10 days, then we have to be out of our apartment the day we get back from NY. What does that mean you might ask? We are jobless come 0730 on Oct 2nd, we are homeless come 0730 on October 14th, we are broke come 0730 on October 20th (rough estimate with our spending habits), and we are now accepting donations. "Abby get off that street corner!" What a whirl wind we have been through the last few hours. Our recruiter told us that there are positions available, but not many. Most hospitals have staffed through the holidays, so only positions open are in January. We only had a few minutes to chat with her before heading into work, so thursday will be a big day of figuring out what to do. We have options, but not ones that we are excited about. LA has positions open, but I'm scared of Britney Spears or Shia Lebuf hitting my car; Dallas has a few positions, but i'm afraid of getting beat up when I rock my NY Giants football gear; we could head home to live in my soon to be vacant house! Who knows really. We are both very disappointed with this news, but we will make it. Thanks for checking in. Will have more informaton soon. Love and miss you all...
Michael and Abby Lee

Hello everyone. Do hope this message finds you all doing great. Abby and I are very very excited about having 2 more shifts left at Phoenix Children's Hospital. I know I have mentioned this before, but we are almost done with our time here in Phoenix. I think the best part about that is the fact that we can actually enjoy the outdoors again. We are very tired of having to hide from the sun. San Diego here we come.
I write to you from work where I'm all alone! Abby was fortunate enough to get called off tonight, so she is at home drinking a glass of wine and catching up on laundry and thank you notes. My night is great. I am working with some great nurses tonight. I must say that as much as Abby and I dislike the workings of this hospital, we have been very blessed with our co-workers. The other travel nurses here and several of the core staff have been amazing to work with. We actually had to say goodbye to one of our favorites the other night. It was harder then we thought. What a great experience we have had here. We have learned a lot of new ways to do things, and we have learned a lot of bad ways to do things. The relationships we have established will stay with us forever and we do hope to keep in touch with several of the nurses here and perhaps one day run into them again.

This past weekend Abby and I were able to experience Sedona, AZ. I must say that many of the people we have talked to were getting this place confused with Senoma, CA. Very different. Sedona is a gem here in AZ. We were told by many people to visit there, many of whom recommended Sedona over the Grand Canyon. Now, I must say that we found that hard to believe because the Grand Canyon was amazing! After visiting Sedona, we will agree with the beauty of Sedona being much greater than that of the Grand Canyon. However, the sheer awe of the Grand Canyon was much greater than Sedona. Come on y'all, it's the Grand Canyon! It's 1 of the 7 natural wonders of the world. http://www.bobspixels.com/kaibab.org/misc/gc_7wond.htm I will credit Sedona in beauty though. The beautiful red rock mountains were amazing to view. We tried to capture this beauty with photo's, but honestly you will have to see these in person to understand. The rocks would turn different shades of red depending on how the light hit them and certain viewing angles would offer different looks as well. An experience we will always remember. What made this trip amazing was the fact that we went on an ATV tour of the canyons. The ATVs were old, but the mud slinging, scenery, and tough terrain made up for it. Abby rode on the back with me, so I did my best to cover her with mud (it rained the night before) and jump as many hills as I could. We were led and followed by guides, but lucky for me (not so much Abby) we were in the middle. There were many trails where we weaved in and out of bushes so the front and back guides couldn't see us. This is when I would hang back from the people in head of us and then fly through puddles, jump jumps, fish tail, and whatever else I could think of to up the excitement of this tour. Good times I tell ya. I wish we would have taken a picture of before and after. My plan to get Abby muddy back fired as I was the one who got soaked. We had to wear something to cover our faces because it was so dry along many of the paths that the dust being kicked up from the people in front of us was very thick. Supposedly there is a ton of wildlife living out on this terrain, but unfortunately we didn't see any of it. The Javelina is a very common animal in these parts. http://www.azgfd.gov/h_f/game_javelina.shtml Check them out. They are ugly jokers who are very aggressive. I was hoping to spot one, but no such luck. Very similar to wild boar, but actually part of the rodent family. Interesting stuff I tell ya! We did this ATV tour on Saturday morning. Friday night we just went for a walk on the streets of Sedona and ate Buffalo at a local Cowboy saloon. They had rattlesnake, elk, and cactus on the menu. We thought about trying these, but they were actually very expensive items. We also caught a couple of jazz bands at this one strip mall. Here they had several galleries offering wine and finger foods. After dinner we ended up in the hot tube chatting about life and observing the beautiful clear sky. We were trying to hunt down Abby's first falling star. How romantic I know! Then you know what we did on Saturday morning. After showering we ended up at "Sedona Jazz on the Rocks, 2008." It was a neat event. Here we sat on the lawn (picture shown), listened to some good Jazz music, and enjoyed people watching. We stayed there for about 40 minutes or so, then headed to Javelina Cantina for dinner. We made a dinner reservation for 5:45 so that we could catch the sunset. Supposedly this was the place to have dinner and watch the sunset as they have a neat little patio that overlooks the west side of Sedona. We arrived on time, sat down on time, then much to our dismay a storm was approaching. This pretty much canceled the sunset, but we really enjoyed the cool breeze and the delicious Mexican food. After dinner we drove back to Phoenix, The End!

Sunday we were pretty lazy. Like I mentioned earlier, we really don't like to do much during the day. We watched the second season of "Lost." For those who haven't ever seen the show, it's Awesome! We hope to start season 3 when we get to San Diego. To be honest, I don't know how people keep up with this show weekly. The show does such a great job leaving you hanging after each episode, that I would go crazy waiting until the next weeks show. We started to talk about what we needed to pack up and ship back home (because we have accumulated a lot of stuff over the past 5 months. Mainly clothes). We work tuesday and wednesday nights, then leave on Friday for New York. On sunday I will attend my first New York Football Giants game. I have been such a huge fan for such a long time, and I finally get to attend a game. Thanks Abby (my Bday present). Don't worry, we will take a lot of pictures and post them when we can. We will be in NYC for about 4 days, then we are heading upstate NY to visit my grandparents, aunt and uncle. Should be a great time. To explain the pictures posted here. The picture with Abby's back to us was where Javelina Cantina was. The picture of just the mountain view was from outside our Hotel room. The rest of the pictures are pretty self explanatory. We posted more pictures from our trip on facebook. Well, that is about it from here. It is 0400 and time to check on my kids, give meds and start to think about charting. Hope you enjoyed the post. We love and miss you all... till the next time...