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:

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