My 10-year-old daughter Olivia is going to a new school this year, which requires her to get up an hour earlier than usual and take the train to Center City Philadelphia. She’s very bright, musically-gifted, cheerful, extroverted, and beautiful. In sum, she is exactly like her mother and doesn’t resemble me in any way. Except one: she would forget her head if it wasn’t attached to her neck.

On Tuesday morning, we got a tearful phone call from her because she had left her violin on the train. SEPTA (the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority) does not have a particularly stellar reputation when it comes to customer service (or anything else, for that matter), but they do actually have a Lost & Found Department. By some small miracle, the violin ended up there undamaged. As I left the house to retrieve the wayward instrument — grumbling to myself that I was going to chain the violin to Olivia’s wrist — I stepped over a UPS package that had just been delivered, containing the bag of violin music that Olivia had left at her grandparents over the weekend. The week before, while we were at Back-to-School night at her school, she sent me a text asking if I could grab the Science folder she had left in her locker. The next day she forgot to go to choir during lunch. The week before she left her ID in her locker (or thought she did; it was later found under a pile of clothes on the floor of her room), her train pass in her coat (which she had left at school), and her water bottle on her desk. That she has not lost her glasses yet is nothing short of amazing.

Sadly, I am not much better. I am notorious for losing my wallet, keys, watch, pens, headphones, iPhone dongles, kids — pretty much anything that isn’t attached to my body. I lost so many watches in high school, my parents refused to buy me any more. At the Alliance conference in Grapevine, TX, I lost (and found) my briefcase three different times in one day. Coming home from a meeting in Alexandria, VA, I got on a train going in the wrong direction. A month later, I bought a train ticket for a return trip from NYC for the wrong day. I’m pathetic (note from Scott: can’t argue with that one).

Which brings us to the main point of today’s post: CMEpalooza Fall is on Wednesday, October 18, starting at 10 AM ET. This is your official reminder. Put it in your calendar. Set an alert. Write it on your hand in pen. Tell your spouse to remind you. Do whatever it is you need to do to remember. I was going to have Scott send me a telegram the day before as my reminder, but then he wrote a blog post that initially listed the wrong day for CMEpalooza (I fixed it before you saw it) and now I don’t trust him. Maybe I’ll have Olivia remind me instead. I hope you all are free on October 20th…

Derek loves it when I give away our hard-earned money (or is it hardly earned money? I get confused sometimes).

But our CMEpalooza sponsor events are always a personal highlight. Yes, it’s nice to be the giver of good news to our winners, and it’s even kinda fun to put together the contest materials. But I also appreciate being forced to take time away from the day-to-day to see the varied kind of work that our sponsors are doing and to get my creative juices flowing.

Let’s face it – we all get stuck in a professional rut from time to time, churning out the same ideas over and over. Consider our Fall sponsor event your chance to take some time to do some professional research and maybe even win some money at the same time.

Starting today, CMEpalooza Bingo!! is back for the second consecutive year. We’re giving away $500 in Amazon gift cards (there are 13 total prizes — first prize is $100 with other prizes of $50 and $25). To win, you simply need to do some very simple research about a handful of our CMEpalooza Fall sponsors.

The rules are simple.

• There are a few documents you’ll need to download and/or print out — The bingo card, the question sheet, and the answer form. Don’t worry – we’ve compiled these into one document that you can print out or download. You can get everything you need by clicking on this link. If you want the CMEpalooza Bingo!! Answer Form as a Word document you can write on, we’ve got that right here for you.
• On the bingo card, you’ll see that each CMEpalooza Fall sponsor has been assigned a specific slot (there are a few slots with ’80 Trivia on there to fill out the card – you’ll have to excuse my odd tastes in some cases). Each slot has coordinates listed in the upper left-hand corner. This is important to note as you are filling out the Answer Form.
• To get the answer to the questions, you’ll probably need to visit some of our sponsor websites. You can find direct links to all of them on the CMEpalooza Fall sponsor page.
• We’re not cruel, so we won’t make you complete the entire card. Simply make one Bingo by answering 5 questions that complete either a vertical, horizontal, or diagonal line (just like, you know, as in a Bingo game). Feel free to visit any additional sponsor sites if you really want to, but it’s not mandatory.
• Fill out the Answer Form and return it to me via email (scott@medcasewriter.com) by our deadline of Wednesday, October 11 at 3:45 p.m. Why 3:45 p.m.? I have no idea. Roll with me people.

We had a really good response to CMEpalooza Bingo!! last fall, but let’s face it, the CME community ain’t that big. If you successfully complete and submit a finished game card to me, your chances of winning are pretty good.

The answers to all of these questions can be found very easily on every one of the Sponsors sites. I didn’t come up with questions that will require a deep search – pretty much everything is 1 click away, at most. It takes, in all honesty, 5 minutes to complete a game board.

So get cracking.

Dear CMEpalooza Groupie,

Camp is great. I like my new friends. The food stinks. We threw our counselor in the pool today. I hit the bulls-eye in archery.

And now that you are paying attention, it’s your turn to write a letter to our CME Advice Columnists so that they can help during our CMEpalooza Fall session.

What has you corporately confused, confounded, or cantankerous?

Do you often find yourself professionally perplexed, perturbed, or petulant?

Perhaps you simply want to complement my awesome, amazing, and astounding use of alliteration this morning?

It’s all fair game (well, most of it is). Just submit your letter in the form below and wait until Wednesday, October 18 to get the answers from our expert panel. Deadline to send in your letter – no stamp needed! – is this Friday (September 29).