Boca Burgers

While in Boca Raton last week, we learned that Boca burgers are from Boca Raton. Silly fact, but we didn't know this!

It was a tremendous experience and I had a great opportunity to attend a Medical Executive Committee Institute last week. It was a gift. A blessing. A darn good blessing.

We landed in sunny Florida and were picked up in a black Lincoln Towncar with one of those gentlemen in a black suit holding our names on a card by the airport's baggage claim. How cool is that?! He whisked us off to the Boca Raton resort, where we somehow scored a corner suite, overlooking the intracoastal waterway and the Atlantic. I could lay in bed, open my eyes, and see the Atlantic, since we were on the 15th floor.



The resort, itself, was beautiful. Reminding us of a colorful monastery, we were touched by the gourmet food, flowing champagne and superb Chardonnay, and complimentary boat trips.





Did I mention the gourmet food? I'm not sure how we managed to not gain 10 lbs while in Boca. We ate SO well. Besides Chilean Seabass at Truluck's and filet at Cielo, we needed something healthy.

So we ate at Morimoto's THREE times in the span of four days.



Morimoto's sets a new bar for us for sushi. Unfortunately, there will be no more supermarket sushi; we had the honor of trying unagi, lobster, raw scallops, hamachi, baby hamachi, and snapper. I cannot remember ever spending $100 on sushi, but this was completely, totally, utterly worth it:



This was our sushi chef making my lobster maki. We named him "Bob." As in, "Sponge Bob."

Aside from the food and drink, the conference itself was amazing. I came away with 6 pages of ideas on how to improve processes and departments in the hospital. I sent Elvis a quick email telling him which departments I want to blow up and reformulate. We'll see how that goes!

I keep having this managerial struggle of trying to find the middle ground (is there a middle ground?) between being a tough, assertive woman in the boardroom and cultivating the spirituality of servant leadership. They are at odds...and because I respect rules so much, I decided that my fourth quarter goal for myself is to get in trouble at work. So I'm going to push some of these reorganizations until I actually get in trouble.

Fun, eh? Why not?

I love conferences like that, where you're continually challenged and you can revisit those notes repeatedly and glean something new. So that's what I plan to do. I'll let you know how well this works and please, oh please, bail me out of jail when I get in trouble at work!

And with that, I am returning to my Christmas-card-writing (I bought seven boxes of cards and have this wickedly ambitious plan to write each of my employees a handwritten card with a small token of my appreciation). But I need to get a move-on; it's already mid-November and I swore I would have all my Christmas shopping, wrapping, and Christmas cards done by December 1!

[Hmm. Maybe *that's* how I'm getting myself in trouble this quarter!]