NOW and THEN

Wednesday, August 17, 2011
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NOW: On the bench. Five days in. Trying to decide what to get for Jonathan for his birthday.


THEN (12 hours ago): Was at Trader Todds at Belmont and Sheffield watching two Corey Hart enthusiasts belt out some classic hits on the karaoke stage. It was vote #1 Karaoke Bar in Chicago by Playboy. And runs a sweet campaign that if you bring in a jar of use vegetable oil you get a free order of fries.

THEN (38 hours ago): Was at Eva's Cafe in Old Town grabbing a coffee and catching up with Anneliese. Cute and quaint this is the perfect coffee shop to meet for hot pumpkin spiced cider and apple cinnamon muffins in late fall. The neighborhood is kind of shoddy with a horse farm two blocks away [yes downtown chicago]. We then hit up North/Clydbourne area for some J.Crew and Banana Republic shopping. Found a pair of $120 jeans marked down to $9.99

THEN (68 hours ago): Was at Cellular Field with the family to celebrate my Grandpa's 80th Birthday. Crazy that my Grandpa is getting that old. We celebrate first with brunch at my brothers and then headed to the game to watch them beat KC. Highlights include stealing all of my Grandpa's belongings or the random bowling pin mascot that was running around. Props to Cellular field for having the most awesome selection of treats and concessions. Yard margaritas, chicken salads, tofu sandwiches --> very vegetarian friendly

THEN (92 hours ago): Grabbing brunch with the girls at Stellas on Broadway. Scrumptious to say the least. Late brunch with the crazy happenings of the night before. But Stellas serves breakfast all day. Got to love the hometown feel of the restaurant with it being family owned and very mom and pop atmosphere. Post brunch hit up Threadless for their sale [all shirts $12 for the next two weeks!!!]. After a failed attempt at getting beach time with the impending rain we went to Wrigley for some shopping and then back to the apartment to prepare for the housewarming party. Major success by the way and need to give credit where credit is due. My June Cleaver skills gleaned with a full spread of tasty morsels [hummus, homemade gauc and tortilla chips, chicken and cheese croissant sammis, cookie bars]. Nati showed up with a case of beer, thanks love. Whipped out the foosball table which will definitely be used again. Introduced the boy to the parents only after he was belittled for wearing an ND shirt, sadly it was mine. This whole mockery business runs in the family what can I say.

That let me wrap a lot of unfinished story telling. Tonight the boy and I are grabbing dinner at Joy's, reviewing the 2 buck chuck I picked up at TJ's, and having ourselves an ice cream eating race. Check in tomorrow for updates....

Ravinia

Tuesday, August 16, 2011
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Imagine where you were 11 days ago and then you might understand why this post might be brief. August 5th Anneliese pulled out her best game and swooned me into a cello drunked food coma state. However I most definitely won't complain.

That Friday after work I ran down to the CVS to grab a bottle of wine for our picnic at Ravinia to watch Yo Yo Ma. Initially when she brought up the idea of this trip I was picturing Bow Wow's cousin. Alas he's a world famous cellist. The CVS is two blocks away from OTC and upon walking, hilarious site. About ten people all in business dress either holding a case of beer or multiple bottles of liquor waiting at the cashier. Now don't tell ever try to convince me that us business people dont understand the importance of TGIF celebrations. After grabbing a bottle of severely discounted Barefoot Pinot Grigio (believe me when I say CVS has the best liquor sales), I jumped on the Northline to Glencoe.

Anneliese picked me up at the train stop and we went back to her house where she had a ridiculous spread of food ready to be packed. She bought hummus, pita bread, grapes, turkey and avocado sandwiches, two other bottles of wine, and two wine glasses. Maybe this is where I insert that we were biking to Ravinia with this all on our backs. I have no problem with bikes when I am not riding them. It's been about two years since I last rode and I am a strong believer in the saying 'if you don't use it, you lose it'. After packing our bags, scrounging around in the garage for fake look-a-like locks we both attempted to saddle up. Anneliese fell off before exiting the driveway and I found I didn't know how to break. Two rest breaks, an accidental run in with a car, and 1.5 miles later we were at Ravinia. We parked and "locked" our bikes up and headed into the show.

RAVINIA is something else. Think you've been to a lawn concert. You haven't. This place is gorgeous. The speakers are set up to observe the speed of sound. People have picnics set up with full tables, candles, and real chairs. It is a site to see. We parked ourselves down and began to feast and wine ourselves.

Yo Yo Ma wasn't to start until 9:00 and it was about 7:30. After eating all the grapes, almost all the pita and hummus, downing two bottles of wine, and half a sandwich each we both fell into a drunken stupor. Which let me tell you is the perfect mood to be in to listen to the world's best cellist. We laid on the blanket, giggled ourselves silly about stupid girl things, and almost fell asleep to the scoreplay of Romeo and Juliet. Yo Yo Ma was the perfect thing to wind down from a crazy trip to the south. And at Ravinia, you can actually see the starry sky.

AHmazing night.

Only to be further topped when we found a wig collection in her brother's room. Nothing tops a midnight Hansel vs. Derek runway contest unless you've got wigs and a camera phone...

ADVICE TO ALL CHICAGO-ians --> Ravinia is a must. And if you're going call me. I'm down!

BACK HOME AGAIN

Friday, August 5, 2011
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Hello all loyal followers.


I HAVE RETURNED!! From the land down under! That might be a lie, but really North Carolina is as foreign to me as Mexico. This was my first real consulting gig and boy did it set some interesting expectations for those to succeed.

For one I got my project assignment Tuesday morning around 10:30. I was called by the project's engagement manager and told that I needed to book a flight for that night at 8:50 out of Midway and into Raleigh-Durham. Let me set the scene a little bit better. At about 10:15 I was sitting in my cube reading through the list of songs on the Phoenix YouTube channel. Upset with how many times they had Fences playing in a row I was attempting to rearrange the order. I then pulled back up a research article debating the merits of click through videos on social sites. An email entered my inbox explaining that I was being considered to jump on a project and when would I be available to jump on a briefing call. Response:
Any moment will do for me
In the call I learned a little about the project at hand:
  • It was a vendor assessment for a new eCommerce platform
  • I would be going to Raleigh, NC for two days
  • And I would be flying out that night

Giving how naive I am I immediately jumped on our AG Axiom site. This is a travel site that AG has aligned with American Express that is supposed to provide us with discounted fares and double points. We learned how to use it in training. But recalling this information in freakout mode is not as easy as it appears. Much later once at the client site I got made fun of by my team for using the site (why did they teach us to use it if no one uses it at AG anyways). Well I selected a departure city of Chicago selecting the O'hare airport NOTE FIRST MISTAKE and then selected arrival as the Raleigh-Durham airport. I was to purchase a ticket for the 8:50 Southwest flight. Alas no flights for Southwest to Raleigh were listed in my results commence anxiety attack. I even filtered my airline results strictly by Southwest. For some reason there were no flights to Raleigh for Southwest all day. Trying to right the situation a little light bulb went off in my head.
How about I use the Southwest site to book my flight! I am such a genius
Come to find out Southwest doesn't even fly out of O'hare only Midway. Ignorance is not bliss...

My PD let me leave the office after lunch so I could find my center and calm down a bit. AKA run to CVS and buy travel size of every toiletry, possibly located a suitcase, and ramp up on the client. Needless to say I got to Midway airport only two and a half hours early to find my flight delayed by half an hour...update three hours early now. No one else from my team showed up until 30 minutes before (true consultants). There were three of us flying together and we didn't land in Raleigh until 12:30. Upon jumping on a bus to the Avis lot we came face to face with the car that was ours for the next two days. Please picture my 6 foot project manager and my 40+ engagement manager and me staring at a teenage girl eco friendly car. Oh boy did that get more than a laugh from me. Especially when it took us a solid two minutes to climb up to 60 mph. We found ourselves checking into the hotel at 1:30 and finally climbing into bed at 2:00 only to wake up 4 hours later at 6:00.

The next two days were a blur of me documenting anything said, expressions observed, drawings from the whiteboard, and screenshots of various web transactions. Amongst all this I will note a few things:
  1. The CIO asking me if I had kids
  2. Dinner at a Best Western
  3. Later that night upon finding out I was born in 1988 asking if I would like to meet his sons and we saying No Thank You
  4. Kendra R from Hooters
  5. Biscuitville for Breakfast
  6. My EM's fondness for Hotwire
  7. My PD finding me asleep in the lobby Thursday morning
  8. Finding the car keys poolside Thursday morning
  9. What do you want from me - Adam Lambert style

All in all a great trip. Friday paled in comparison. Find myself now still working on the same task of compiling the 60+ pages of notes I took from the two day trip. Filing my expenses, clocking my time, and getting free breakfast and lunch! Got to love my company.

And one thing I left Friday with: there is a very high likelihood that I will be assigned to a project in Charlotte, SC starting in two weeks until the end of Thanksgiving where I will be traveling every Mon-Thurs. HELLO Marriott points!!!

Seeing as this post is long enough I shall end here...
But I will write soon about the amazing time I had at Ravinia on Friday night with Anneliese and Matt's bday last night at the Parthenon and Dave and Busters

MASCOT UPDATE

Monday, July 25, 2011
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for my fellow brains out there. here is a special tribute to you! couldn't help but laugh myself silly when i found this under the mascot apparel category on ebay. nothing screams school spirit like a downtrodden donkey.

late night laze

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how is it that i can lay on my couch yawning for 2 hours straight and as soon as i lay down in bed sleep is the furthest from my mind. myswell be somewhat productive even though the thought of how few hours i've slept in the past few days makes me cringe. think i'm gonna cut the afternoon soda out of my daily schedule. but really how can one pass up free soda pop at work?


today was my first real legit day at the job. no more NHO bootcamp. no more babysitting. i wandered into work at 8:03 AM. i was all fine and dandy making a mock website about how amazing i am, making a pie chart of my weekend activities until mohammed pinged me. 'diane what are you billing your hours to this week?' my heart started racing when i realized that i am now swimming solo in the scary world of consulting and i better get off this bench before my more frequent anxiety attacks start taxing my potential lifespan. so i met with my CAM and drafted all these awesome goals about who and what i want to be; any progress towards this direction is to not be discussed HORSE CART PEOPLE [thanks fessler]. in the afternoon i got a nifty little project to do. after talking big game about how easy it was going to be it only took me 20 minutes to realize that i know nothing. i cannot even determine if commerce done in canada would make a firm international or what the correct definition of a sub-brand could possibly be. let's hope tomorrow gets better.

on a more jovial note i did some second hand shopping with the lovely monica harvey on sunday. had a blast. bought 6 skirts and nothing else. keeps me from having to do laundry this week. i took her to, can you guess it, JOY's for lunch where we commenced to enter our third trimester of thai noodle baby. #9 Bai Tong you will always have my heart. after crawling home and playing family feud online for about 3 hours i hit downtown chi for some grouponing. brain and i went to see Friends With Benefits :-] the smiley face is referencing that i had a good time. as for the movie i would wait until it hits redbox. not bad but not amazingly good either. i wish we would have held out for smurfs 3D.

well i'm going to try and hit the hay. tomorrow i've gots post work plans so i have to get my beauty sleep now. thanks for listening!

This World Is Dearth

Saturday, July 23, 2011
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Finally done with my New Hire Orientation!! Yay dance around and keep dancing because I got my FIRST PAYCHECK!! Cue N'Sync 'Just Got Paid' and Rebecca Black's 'Friday'

On the flipside this means I must bid farewell to the days of my youth. No more mid day naps, no more Ellen, no more lunch cocktails. Wait who am I kidding I am a consultant I will still get lunch cocktails. And I don't have tv anyways so me and Ellen meet on twitter. And speaking of social media I have joined 4 sites this week alone! Hit me up on Yammer, Pinterest, Google +, amongst restarting this site. It is really useful though because half of my work focuses on understanding technologies, users, what touchpoints they engage, and how they connect and engage in sites. With so much free time in between training sessions eMarketer, after Forrester, after AdAge research articles were read. Learned some interesting things such as:
People are more likely to click through a video on a website on Wednesday
The day that Facebook experiences the most traffic is Thursday-plannning for the wknd

So our last day in NHO Bootcamp started with presentations to higher level managers and executive members. I presented on the Allstate Teen Driver....which by the way IS SOOOO COOL! They created a digital video format so teens can capture a live video or upload a video of them promising to engage in safe driving practices, which is then in turn approved by their parents and Allstate. Also there are some sweet games such as Street Sluth, Allstate Teen Great Race. Below is the link. If you want to waste some time and want to have a fun and cheesy time please click.

www.allstateteendriver.com/games/

If you are wondering what I would do at Acquity Group, this is a project that I could have been staffed on if I was here a year ago. However, given that the staffing manager is taking a week of vacation starting monday I am pretty sure I will be sitting the bench for at least the first two weeks. So CHICAGO 'pencil me in' as I like to say, I am gonna be in town.

I usually have to be super careful cause I LOVE making plans. And as of now most of my upcoming weekends are booked :-/ This next weekend I am coming home :-). The following [Aug 6-7] Lollapalooza with Nati. Then Becca might be coming the following weekend. The 20-21 is free but I feel like I have something. Then the next weekend is Milwaukee- YAY haven't seen Whitney in forever and the brother and wifey are coming too! Then it's Labor Day with the fam as usual out in boondocks Illinois. However this year will be special we've got a boat dinner cruise planned, my grandpa is turning 80, and I am two hours closer since I now live in Chicago :-o

I need to stop speaking about the future and tell y'all bout the last two nights. So my date went great. He took me to Feast out in Bucktown YUM! And all you need to know if were going out again this next Thursday too but my treat. As a noob to Chicago this is gonna be tough to pick something out- Clark Dog? Joy's Noodles [def an option lol]

Found out yesterday at work that my college buddy was leaving Acquity Group and it was his last day. Sad news for me for now I am a stray NH College kid. After work we went over to Jefferson Tap and had a happy hour with some pitchers of Stella. Needless to say I left with three new college buddies. I was so proud of myself though because I hate riding solo to meet up with people and I hate even more to go to an event where I don't know anyone really that well - makes networking a problem. But I went and had a great time and met a lot of people so props in my book. Afterwards I ran home and headed over to Duffy's to meet with the other new hires where we celebrates the end of bootcamp. $20 all you can eat and drink from 6-11. Let me specify for you readers that the all you can eat was loosely applied. When I visited there sad definition of a buffett they were three ribs and a scoop of mac n cheese. This bar was sooo fratty thought. However when I texted that to Nick autocorrect nicely changed it to this 'this place is so dearth'. Whatever that means? Later on in the evening Nick showed up [plently of interesting stories here but they best be told in first person] and Nati her boyfriend and her brother. We all headed out down the street to Matisse (love this place!) where we preceded to play Connect 4 and Jenga for the rest of the nite. Sounds lame but I actually had a great time. Love my friends.

Well anyways todays a new day and I must prepare. Cubs game in an hour!

miss meeeee?

Thursday, July 21, 2011
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sat in the same chair, in the same room, with the same people, looking at the same deck. FOR THE PAST 8 HOURS.

Good thing:
1) I enjoyed what we were going over.
2) The executive kitchen with the keurig and nice tasting coffee has access through this room.
3) The view of the Chicago skyline from the 22nd floor boardroom
4) We got free lunch from Potbellys

BUT WORK TALK IS BORING

sooo moving on- got to see my friend Kim +1 to my Chicago circle!!

While walking home from Ace to get a key cut Nick and I ran into two people on the streets. Yea we run this city...kk not really. We can't say "we run this city" until we go to Parrots per definition of Nick. But that was why I was meeting up with Kim. To give her a key to my Purdue apartment so she can get the table she bought off my roommate Leslie. When we got back to the house Nick goes "You should try out the key and see if it works." Sorry Nick but I feel that walking to West Lafayette (since I have no car or Zipcar account yet) would not have a nice ROI for how much my time sells for now.

But enough speak about today I have exciting news from last night's TRIVIA at Wild Goose. My team, and by my team I mean Rupert Murdoch's Ninja Wife team almost won!! We were first going into the second round, which came with an award of SocoLime shots. And let me be brief in describing this trivia but it was nothing of the sort I had ever seen before. First it was no question answer Trivia Pursuit. This was mind stumpers, rhyme time, riddle working, and hands-on activities trivia. Sadly we came in third....but nothing beats an amazing night of trivia with 80% of my friends from Chicago (aka 4 people; none of which follow my blog!).

Well anyways I best be singing off Miss Rolston here has a date tonight! And that's how the cookie crumbles Lakeview!