Oh, wow.

Wow. The Heart Walk is over. Well, not really. People always ask me if I can now take time off, but there is still an awards ceremony to plan, money to enter, purchase orders to fill, thank-yous to send out, follow-up meetings to set, reports to run, files to organize, items to return...you get the idea.

My whole body aches and I feel like I haven't slept in weeks, which, really, I haven't. The event went really well. I wanted to include some links to some of the pre-event stories that have run in the newspapers and on news stations for you to look at if you would like:

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/heart-stroke-catalano-2156901-years-underwent

http://cbs2.com/video/?id=76984@kcbs.dayport.com

I haven't seen the post-event stories yet, but there were a lot of photographers and video cameras from the various news stations, so we will see...

We have between 5000 and 6000 people attend, and (from what they could tell), it went really well! I was stuck to my head mike the whole time putting out fires, but I have heard a lot of really good feedback. We are continuing to raise money toward our $1.3 million goal, and so far have raised more money than any previous year (this is the 28th year). Money is still coming in and if you are curious, you can check out our rolling total at www.ocheartwalk.org.

So, there was a definite lack of sleep last week. Usually about 4 hours a night, and then on Saturday I got to bed at 1:30am and had to get up at 3am to go finish setting up for everything to start at 7am.

Involved in all this lack of sleep are some pretty funny stories. I think my mental capacity was severely threatened because of the extended lack of sleep and the many details that I had to keep in my head for the event.

One morning, I was freaking out and getting ready for work at about 5am (some early mornings!) and I couldn't find my bra. I looked for it for about 10 minutes before I realized that I was actually wearing it.

That's not all...

We had an employee in the office who had her birthday coming up. I pretty much talked to her about it every day. When the office card came to me to sign, I filled up almost half of one side of the card with a really funny and personal message. The problem? I wrote my Happy Birthday message to the person in charge of getting the card, NOT the person who would be receiving it. Yes, we did need to buy a new card.

There is another great story about me on Saturday and the office alarm system, but I will save that for another day when I have caught up on more sleep. Definitely some seriously good times!

It is good to be coming back into the land of the living. I will definitely post pictures of the walk as soon as I get some.