Final Days

So this is my final week in Chicago, and all I want to do is sleep all the hours that I missed sleeping! I should be trying to fit in everything Chicago, but I've learned the train system down pat, tried many deep dish pizza places, and greatly appreciated Lake Michigan and the lakefront. I think that's pretty good for 3 months...but there are somethings that I haven't learned...

1) I don't know why, but every cab driver knows I"m not from Chicago. They always ask, how long have you been here? or where are you from? and they just know! I have no idea how...

2) I still wait in line for the train....everyone still pushes, but I try to be not rude

3) I say sorry when I bump into people.

Besides that I've become a more intense driver!

But big plans for upcoming week-Friday I"m trying to plan a big madison going away party, Saturday I plan to move out, Sunday-Monday visit parents, and then show up in Madison either Monday or Tuesday. Then I will play trivial pursuit.

That's the big plan-hopefully I will stick to it!

Very confusing

So I just realized in the past 2 weeks I've called 3 places home-

1. When I was flying into Chicago from Kansas I thought "it's great to be back home"
2. When I drove to Madison this weekend and saw the Capital "it's great to be back home"
3. When I talked to my mom at home and thought "I should visit home"

Luckily though I'm only paying rent at two homes!

But last week was pretty rough-I was picked up on this client that was near the end of their engagment so one day I spent 12 hours adding numbers up. My hand felt like a claw that day. I think last week I put in 2 14 hour days and 2 12 hour days.

Also really horrible last week-I had to run and grab coffee every day for the other teammates, which was OK, but one day I'm like "Wow I"m super tired, I should get a mocha-it's basically chocolate milk and a shot of espresso right?"

A few things wrong with this line of thought

1. I've only TASTED coffee-never drank it
2. I don't drink soda much anymore-and usually have caffeine free
3. I don't drink coffee.

So I drank this mocha and thought it tasted OK, and then an hour later the caffeine HIT ME! It was horrible, I was shaking and jittery and felt like I was drunk or something but worse-I was at work while this was occuring. And I kept trying to look up online how to fix it, but couldn't find anything so for 3 hours I felt horrible. I don't think I'm touching coffee ever again.
Yuck.

Kansas

Wow-long time since posting...So I was in Holland and then came back for Saturday and had Valentine's Day with Matt <3

i know cute.

So Sunday I flew the Kansas City! But we went to Missouri Kansas City, not Kansas City Kansas...i guess they are just separated by a river.

When we got in we went out to this rib place. I must say, i beats Famous Dave's ten-fold! But we went to the workplace the next day and got a tour of the place and saw organs! But you couldn't tell they were organs-they were all frozen and stuff...but we did see cut up mice?

But the week there was long-we worked pretty late and the hotel didn't really have an internet connection to connect to, so when I got back today there was like, a week's worth of stuff to do.

It was so classic one night though-I got sushi for everyone's dinner and I've never really ordered or ate sushi so i got some california roll with avocado and when i picked it and started to eat the sushi i'm like oh this green stuff is the avacado and i took a huge chunk of it because i love avacado, and ate it with the sushi....it was wasabi! And I totally screamed at the client's site and spit it out in the garbage and people made fun of the the next day...really embarrassing.

but now i'm back in chicago! yay sleep now

Chicagoland

So survived the week in Holland Michigan-and every time we ordered dinner at some restaurant they always messed up our order! Once they forgot our salads, another time they gave us shrimp instead of salads, and they kept putting mayo on everything. And I only saw one windmill.

But everyone was really nice so that's a plus. I was working at this plastic manufacturer though and everytime I walked into the warehouse I felt plastic burn my nostrils...

NEXT week I'm in Kansas City, and we're going to work on this other manufacturer of chemicals and drugs or something and they have HUMAN KIDNEYS as inventory! I'm very excited/scared.

That's all for tonight-going to do laundry and rest up for the upcoming days!

Holland!...Michigan

So for this week I'm in Holland Michigan and I just pulled in about 10 minutes ago...So far there's a mall...and I think I saw a windmill that looked like a Holland-ish one...So if anyone wants to look up stuff to do here-let me know!

PS: yes driving through Gary Indiana did smell really bad!

Weird day

Had a very weird day today-was not assigned to anything so was supposed to just sit in the office and wait for something to do....So after reading yahoo, wsj, jsonline, and other news stories, youtubing and other fun stuff I was finally done with the workday!

One of my workfriends and I went to his place on the train (which takes forever!) and then got ready for his friend's surprise birthday party-it was pretty fun! We ended up getting deep dish pizza, cake and played apples to apples so it was a really fun night-and then...

Went to hop on the bus and after about 10 minutes on the bus the bus driver basically says it's the 'last stop' even though it's not...and makes us get off the bus and is like 'get on this bus'. So me and this other guy get kicked off and I have no idea where I am and have no idea what to do. I tried finding the train but there was no stop nearby and decided to catch this 'bus' which showed up so much later. This bus turned out to be about an 1-1:30 long-still had NO idea where I was, and ended up on Michigan Avenue where I then walked like 30 minutes home....So yeah, Good day-bad night

Obama Give's Em' Hell

So Obama broke away from his speech and gives an awesome one!

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3r4THo2GWQg>

My scary nightmare!

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/02/05/giant.snake.colombia/index.html

This is the craziest story ever!

OMG!

SOMEONE STOLE MY APPLE! i put it in a bag with a POST IT NOTE with my name on it and someone stole it out of the office fridge! I'm super mad because I just bought that apple and it looked so delicious....

...also my boss had some yogurt stolen last week...how do we get the culprit?

February!

I can't believe it's February already! Work has been pretty long these past couple of weeks-working about 10 to 11 hours. So I haven't been really doing anything except work and then come home and zone out watching-
Monday-The Bachelor
Tuesday- House repeats
Wednesday- Lost
Thursday- The Office


At least I haven't gotten into 24 this season!

ALSO the highlight of my day today was when I asked the two guys on my team what they were doing for Valentine's Day and my senior goes "SHIT!"

OMG! I nearly died laughing! Then they were like, "what day is it?" and I said Saturday so they were happy about that...but still it was SO funny!

Lessions

So, I guess you are not supposed to write on your hand when you're in the business world...people look at you funny.!

Copiers and Printers galore!

So it's been awhile-sorry to all my 'faithful'' readers out there! (PS to meg-thanks for the savage love tip-it's been hell with out it!)

But matt came down this weekend and it was AWESOME! Besides getting to see my bf and hang with him, it was just really awesome to be able to go out with someone in the city. Thursday he came down and we went to the art museum down the street! And all for free-thursdays from 5-8 are free, so we did a 'power aaaaaart' hour and ran around the place seeing all the cool art.

Then the next day I had to go into work at McDonalds (and no, there are not any fry machines...sadly) and it wasn't the best day-was kinda tired after 50 hours that week, and then had to deal with rush hour traffic in Chicago (also not fun) but Matt and I hung out that night and ate chinese-yay!

Then Saturday we went to the Shedd aquarium which was REALLY cool-and i got a discount because the oceanium isn't open till June, PLUS I'm a Chicago resident now ;)

Then we lazed about and went out to Gino's East Pizzaria and waiting outside in line...to wait INSIDE in a line. Finally we got in and wrote our names on the wall-everyone does it-I can't wait till Matt puts the pictures up -hint!

Sunday we went to some Jewish diner and I kept texting Brandon about the place! And the burgers were REALLY good. But then Matt left-sad!

But on the bright side, I'm with a new team this week and I really like this group-it's only the 3 of us, so it's nice to work close with people. However, what I've learned so far on this internship is that the most frustrating part of this internship is the COPIER/PRINTER! OMG! I feel like I"m in Office Space. There's 4 main printers on one floor and everyday at least one gets jammed and then everyone prints on one printer and then it's full...but I think that's it for today, back to the bachelor!

Girls afternoon!

Got out of work early and actually saw sunlight! A few of the girls decided to go out and grab a drink after work (again, with tax and tip my beer =$7), and it was really nice to talk to a few of the girls i haven't really met yet. It was a little sad today because it was the last day of training so we won't really see anyone for a while since we'll all be working, but hopefully there'll be stuff on the weekends!

Milk War: Round 1

Milk War Round 1 is over! Tom and I talked about how much we drank milk when we moved in so we decided to have a 'milk war' to see who could finish a gallon of milk first...and I WON!

Also, yesterday was horrible-I was super hung over from going out Saturday-was it worth it? Maybe, had an awesome time Saturday, but awful time Sunday...

Talked to people from home for about FOUR HOURS yesterday! So funny how much you miss out in a week.

But probably going to chill today, and get ready for more training tomorrow!

Differences

So the onion here does NOT have savage love in the back...and I don't know why-in both issues I've picked up-nada.

Also really cool are the street musicians-in the subways!! I went home on the red today and three guys were singing stand by me-it was so sweet and good but i didn't have any money to give...

Someone was walking with a sled??? They had their groceries on a sled??? I've never seen this.

PS: Working on a saturday sucks. Hopefully i don't work saturday next week.

Making Hamburger Helper!

So today was a really long day, we started 30 minutes later, and expected to get out at 430...but we got out at 630...soooo yeah. At least we get paid time and a half overtime. But I don't think I said anything about yesterday...

Yesterday was a day in the making, I finally got some people out after work! I announced to all 70 of us that we were going bowling/bar-ing it up, and out of those people 7 arrived-4 of which were from Madison (including me) and 2 of my new close friends, and a friend of the Madison guys...so no one new came out-which was a bummer...But I was happy that we all hung out for a couple of hours and relaxed! (Also the price on the beer was insane! $5 for a miller lite! What!?)

However, when we left it was so cold that I decided to take the train instead of walk, and Spencer was like "oh we can take the red", so we went to this stop underground and I felt like someone was going to rob me it was so scary! And the worst part was that I learned that since the red is underground for a bit...it goes UNDER the river! So the whole while I was waiting I kept thinking that the river would fall into the subway. But it didn't (obviously).

And then an hour after I got home a random intern called wanting to know about the bowling, and I talked to someone the next day that had to have their internet hooked up, so that gave me some hope that these interns want to hang out.

Tomorrow we have a 'happy hour' with the firm, so I'm sure everyone will go out, I'm going to see how I do on darts vs these Chicago folks!

Wow

So we had our second day, and it was really nice because we had all these interns from other cities, but my table had two girls from the previous day that are really cool-so I had a good time! The lunch provided today was realllllllly good too, I had this big salad with chips and guacamole and this really good soup. Yum. I met another accountant that's really energetic like me, so that could be either really good or really bad! But he's nice as well.

At the end of our day though, I was really excited to go out with all the other interns and get to know people on a more friend based way, but a lot of people flaked out and we decided not to go. That was a big bummer, and then I got home and one of my friends called and had her laptop STOLEN! On the first day! Someone had thrown a brick into her car to take it-so I helped her out and found out who to call, but it was so surprising....I almost forgot that i was living in a big city. Luckily though it was on our first day and we didn't have any work on because that would be even more horrible!

But because of that i was able to talk to my peer adviser and she seemed nice, and she was also surprised that no one was going out...hopefully tomorrow we'll go somewhere...

More to come!

Sear'ious Awesome Tower

So I had my first day of work today, it was pretty cool. One of my accounting friends and I decided to meet up before and walk in together to the Sear's Tower. We had to check in at the front desk and go through security, and then were on our floor! There were about 50 other new hires, and I was seated at a table with 4 other employees who were all pretty cool. I was hoping that we could all get a drink or food after the day, but we were all so drained from all the orientation that everyone headed home.

This is where I made my big mistake...I wanted to see how long it took to walk from the Sear's Tower to our apartment and I found out that it was 30 minutes, and that I should never walk in high heels again! I had two huge blisters on the bottom of my feet and the minute I got in my apartment building I took them off. It was really funny because this lady noticed what i had done and we were laughing about it.

Hopefully I will be able to walk better tomorrow, and buy some flat nice shoes, my feet are not made for high heels.

Tomorrow I Work!!!

So after getting not enough sleep-the bed is WAY too big and they gave me five pillows that all have a different feel-I got a few errands done today.

Around noon then, we all went out for a little walk down Michigan Avenue towards Millennium Park, it was a pretty beautiful day for January. Saw all the weird art things there, the digital face things, the bean, the other artsy stuff, and then we decided to walk to the Sears Tower. It was pretty weird at first because all the buildings are so tall and it takes a while to get used to, especially after living in Madison where you can see the capital from everywhere. But it was pretty funny seeing a Dunkin Donuts on every block (more than Starbucks!) and so many sandwich places. Also saw a fair share of homeless people for a Sunday afternoon.

But the Sears Tower was pretty scary when you stand right below it and straight up and can't see the top-will find out tomorrow how it feels to be IN the Sears Tower.

Stopped at a pizza place for lunch and had a 'famous deep dish pizza', but I think I liked the Gino's deep dish pizza better, and then caught the orange line home.

Also found out that we don't have a mail key for our mailbox and it looks like there's a broken off key in the keyhole for it...will have to ask landlord about that later.

More to come tomorrow!

First Full Day

Hey all-I'm creating a blog so I can update everyone on my life without calling everyone in my phone-so read if you want!

I moved into the Chicago apartment yesterday-Craigslist worked EXTREMELY well finding a good sublet. We're in the South Loop a few blocks away from the El (I'm learning the lingo haha) and yesterday we looked around and discovered like 5 sandwich shops all within a few blocks. So I will never be short on Subway or Potbellies.

Also really nice is that we have a grocery store a few blocks away that's open 24/7. It was super weird getting some basic staples because the aisles were crazy skinny and there were so many people more. Eileen kept making fun of me saying 'this is the city not the suburbs'-pretty funny! Main differences so far- eggs are crazy expensive here! It was about $2.29 for 12 larges eggs. Also, I was really mad about this one, I could find no fresh green leaf or romaine lettuce-they only had the bagged salads, and only fresh iceberg. Very weird.

But after we all settled in (and I took a nap) we decided to hit up Chicago and downed about a whole bottle of wine. We decided not to go to far so we went to the Wabash tap-basically the equivalent of the Red Shed in my opinion. Only real choice was beer-they would make mixed drinks but not the type of bar for that. Was kinda disappointed that they only had one dart board and only one pool table, but they did have food! We had some nachoes!

Got back and woke up this morning really early because everything's still so new, and looked outside to see everything covered in fog! It was very weird, I couldn't see the buildings one-two blocks over it was so foggy. It just lifted during this post so that was very weird. We'll see how today turns out!