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....

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...

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