I was on the Gram the other day (mind you, I don’t have my own account, but I “borrow” my wife’s from time to time to lurk) and saw another one of those pesky abbreviations that threw me for a loop.

“TLDR We’ll be open by the end of September ”

Muttering to himself: WTF does TLDR mean? IDK. SMH. NVM.

My 15-year-old son would be proud of me.

Now, of course, I barely even know what any of these abbreviations stand for — I stopped trying around the time of LOL — but I do like to be able to understand what people are trying to tell me, so I looked up “TLDR.” And got pretty darn angry.

TLDR = Too long didn’t read

Basically, it’s Internet slang for lazy people. My apologies if anything more than 2-3 paragraphs seems like too much effort for you, but I’m not going to spoonfeed you the highlights like a small child. A good story (or a good blog posts) takes time to tell. It’s not a let-me-cut-to-the-chase kind of thing. Maybe that seems too harsh. Tough noogies.

Quick aside: Here is a list of “great literature” I was forced to read in high school and college that should be labeled as TLDR (or maybe, too boring didn’t read). There are probably more but these are the ones I remember best.

• The Scarlet Letter
• Oliver Twist (sub in the Dickens book of your choosing)
• Beloved
• Romeo and Juliet
• Fahrenheit 451

Anyway, back to the point of this post. I hate TLDR. Maybe it’s because Derek and I spend a lot of times on these posts and we really, really want you to read every word so that we don’t feel we are wasting our time. Maybe it’s because I like to read good writing. Maybe this is my “get off my lawn you whippersnapper!” moment.

But hey, whatever it is, I promise that I will never give you a TLDR “out” atop one of our Palooza posts. Which reminds me that we actually have a few newsworthy items to share:

1. CMEpalooza Trivia Night is back for the third consecutive year at the Alliance Industry Summit (AIS). This year, it will be held from 6-730 pm on Monday, September 14, in the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Research Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

Thanks to our event sponsor, Academic CME, there will free food and drink as well as cash prizes for our winners. Because of the truncated nature of AIS, the focus of our questions will be a little bit different than in previous years. We will only be able to cover one block of presentations with our questions, so other rounds will focus on things like the Almanac, the ACCME, and other related topics. Plus, we’ll have our usual wildcard questions that align with our personal interests. And musical interludes. And dad jokes.

Please come.

2. We’d like to rev up our Ask Us Anything advice column in September, but that really depends on you. There have been a few items trickling in, but we need more. So if you have a personal or professional conundrum that is particularly vexing,  drop a line in our virtual mailbox. We have saved jobs and marriages with our advice. We’re that good.

3. Did you know that Derek gets $100 every time someone books a vacation to Iowa using code WARNICK? Yup.

IYKYK

My inner monologue upon returning from vacation last weekend and reading through the blog posts Scott wrote the week I was gone.

Ahhhhhh, I am feeling fresh and relaxed after a week off. Might as well crank up the ol’ laptop and see what Scott wrote last week. I hope he hit all the key points in his post announcing the 2026 CMEpalooza Fall agenda. Let’s see what we have here…ok, random Back to the Future quote, good, that’s important…reference to us being crochety old men, nice, very on brand…ah ha! Yes! A mention of LeBron James now being on the Sixers! Whew! I was worried he would forget to include that. Great, great, I think he covered all the important stuff. Oh, he did a second post later in the week? Interesting…let’s give this a read…”If you were to ask 10 people to think of an adjective that best describes me, ‘kind’ would not be a word that ended up on anyone’s list”…aww, c’mon, that’s not entirely true. I bet at least a couple people would have it at number 9 or 10 on their lists. Remember that time I met Scott for lunch and I offered to pay but then realized I had left my wallet in the car? He only rolled his eyes a couple times before sighing and paying the bill. That was sort of kind…

Hopefully by now you have all had a chance to check out the new agenda. Though I don’t like to do it too often, I’ll offer a big thank you to Scott for handling the agenda release while I was out on vacation.

Where did Derek go on vacation, you may be asking yourself (you’re probably not, but I’m using it as a literary device so I can tell you where I went and make a point). Good question, and one that I have been asked many times this summer over the course of normal small talk. This year, the responses I have received when I answer the question have been a bit different.

Here’s a typical example:

Them: Are you traveling anywhere for vacation this summer?

Me: Yes, we’re leaving in a couple weeks.

Them: Nice. Where are you going?

Me: Iowa

Them: Oh…why?

After I say “Iowa” there is always a pause, a look of confusion, maybe raised eyebrows, followed by the inevitable “Why?”

The “why” is that we have two very good friends who both teach at Luther College in Decorah, IA, who have been inviting us to come visit them for years. For a number of reasons—including the fact that neither of my kids have much interest in vacationing in Iowa—we had yet to take them up on their offer. Until last week.

Here’s the thing: it was great. Unexpectedly great. If you were born with a coastal bias like me, when you think of Iowa, you think of miles and miles of flat ground populated by cornfields, silos, and maybe a couple of cows. Maybe that’s what the rest of Iowa looks like, I dunno, but unbeknownst to me, the northeastern part of Iowa is part of the Driftless Area of the Midwest. It’s about a 25,000 square foot area of Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois that the ice sheets missed during the last Ice Age. Instead of the flatlands typically left behind by the glaciers, this region maintained its craggy bluffs, deep valleys, freshwater streams, etc.

We spent a lovely week kayaking, hiking, and exploring the small but fun town of Decorah. The week ended on a high note with a visit to the Pizza Farm, which is exactly what you think it is. It’s an active farm that also sells pizza. Fantastic. Five stars all around.

As you’re looking through the CMEpalooza Fall agenda and deciding which sessions you want to watch, I encourage you to give consideration to participating in a session or two that you might usually skip. Maybe your role primarily focuses on accreditation, and you don’t have much interest in grants. Or maybe you have been working in IME for half your life and have trouble drumming up much enthusiasm for a session targeting those early in their careers. That’s fine. We recognize that every session isn’t for every learner.

Buuuuuuuuut, it wouldn’t hurt for you to take a couple minutes and check out one of the sessions you shrugged your shoulders at when you read the description. What else are you going to do, work? You say you’re going to work, but we both know you’re not going to work. You’re going to check your phone, look at your socials, send your family a couple funny cat videos, get a cup of coffee, use the bathroom, and generally putz around until the next session starts.

Who knows, maybe the session you thought would be boring will be great. Unexpectedly great.

If you were to ask 10 people to think of an adjective that best describes me, “kind” would not be a word that ended up on anyone’s list. Other 4-letter words, sure, but “kind”? Not so much.

Don’t get me wrong – I have my moments. For instance, when I see someone in and around my neighborhood who looks like they are clearly lost or confused, I will often step in to ask them where they are trying to go and point them in the right direction. It still bothers me that I sent someone the wrong way by mistake 3 summers ago. Totally accidental, Mr. Belgian Tourist, I promise!

No, I am not your classic “nice guy” who is going to go out of my way to help out a stranger or stop in the middle of the block to chat with the new neighbors (but Derek absolutely would!). Which perhaps is why it amazes me that I have fallen into an industry where kindness to relative strangers seems to be an unspoken prerequisite.

Certainly, we have been privy to this in CMEpalooza over the years, not so much when we reach out to people to take part in our sessions since they hopefully feel that this is something they benefit from on a professional level, but moreso when we need some sort of technical or specialized advice on the side. Virtually without exception, people go out of their way to be kind and offer whatever help we need. Often, their help goes far beyond what we expect. We’re paying back some of these “super helpers” (or burdening them excessively, depending on your perspective) by inviting them along for the ride during the upcoming anchor session of CMEpalooza Fall entitled, “Ask Us Anything: Live Rewind.”

(I could use this time to remind everyone to drop a postcard in our virtual “Ask Us Anything” mailbox if you need any personal or professional advice, but that’s not the point of today’s blog post)

In the last month, I was twice reminded of the inordinate kindness of my colleagues. Every now and then, I run into an issue in my non-Palooza duties that has me stumped. Perhaps I’m flummoxed by the non-response of a supporter, or a faculty member has ghosted me for weeks and weeks, or there is a new project I’m working on with some weird innuendos that I have never before encountered. It happens to all of us. Ideally, we have a rolodex (remember those?) of professional colleagues to whom we can reach out to get the answers we need. But there are times when we need specific information that only a select few people in the CME world have access to. These are the times I ran into recently.

I emailed reticently – I’m paraphrasing here – “You don’t know me, but I work in CME too and I’ve got a problem I’m hoping you can help with. Pretty please?” And you know what? Both times, these total strangers not only came to the rescue but they volunteered to talk me through all of the issues I was having and helped to identify some that I hadn’t thought about. Some of them sent me documents and templates that they had created to help keep them on track and encouraged me to use them as well instead of building something new from scratch that likely would have taken hours. Why? What was in it for them? Kindness. That’s apparently what people do around here.

“So tell me neighbor, it looks like you help getting up on that ladder. Anything I can do?”

(Nah, I’ll let Derek handle that one. Just doesn’t feel right yet.)