A Week In Review

I’m so sorry it’s been so long since I’ve posted anything…I have been so busy. Last Thursday and Friday I had to go to Chicago for a conference, so I was swamped with work on the days before that trying to get everything done before I left.

Because my company is too cheap to pay for an extra night’s hotel room (we’re talking $210 to a company that brings in $1.3 billion in revenue) we had to fly in the morning of the conference (that means I was up at 4:30 after going to bed at 1:00). We had an uneventful, short plane ride, and then took a train into the city and then were supposed to catch a bus after that. We got off the train and were looking around when a VERY nice police officer came up to us and asked us if we needed help! How embarrassing…apparently we really looked like tourists! So he told us how to get to the hotel, and we hiked ourselves and our luggage 4 blocks to the Sheraton. We stored our luggage and went to the first day of the conference.

The conference was awesome!!! It had to do with SEC regulations and filings (which I know would bore 99.9% of you) and it was so neat to learn more about what I do on a daily basis. There were a couple CFOs in the conference (which only had about 30 people total) and it was nice to hear what they thought of certain things. I also learned that there is an Accounting Hall of Fame, and it’s located in my city (again, an easy way for you to find out where I live!). We all assured the instructor that none of our vacation plans had changed…we would not be visiting it any time soon!

At the end of the conference for the first day we got to check into our rooms and then there was a cocktail reception with free drinks for us to get to know each other. Did I mention there were free drinks? You know, at first I was worried about going with someone else from my company…I kind of like to do things by myself, and then the fact that it was a guy…I felt really uncomfortable about the whole thing. Thankfully I have an awesome husband that wouldn’t think twice about me traveling with another guy…I know a lot of husbands that would be irate about that! But the guy was actually someone that I had worked with when I was in public accounting, and that night I was glad I wasn’t by myself. We had drinks (did I mention they were free?) and then we walked around Chicago searching for presents for all of our family members. Then we went and ate dinner at this wonderful restaurant! It was a Brazilian steak-type place. They had this anti-pasta bar-thing that you could eat from whenever you wanted, and then these guys would just walk around with all kinds of different meats that they would cut for you if you wanted it. You could eat as much as you wanted and we were definitely stuffed! The food was so good though! The meal was expensive (good thing we weren’t paying for it!) it was about $170 with tip for the two of us, which included drinks and dessert. After dinner we walked back to the hotel and I climbed into bed with my laptop and enjoyed the rest of my night watching TV and playing on the internet without any interruptions!

The next day was pretty uneventful…and at 4:00 we had to leave to catch our plane. The train was full so we had to stand the whole way from downtown to the airport, and along with the initial luggage that we had, we had acquired presents for our families and bags with binders and books from the conference…my body hurt all over. It felt so good to hand the bags over when we got our boarding passes and just sit for a couple of minutes before boarding the plane.

The rest of the weekend was great…Saturday we went to the zoo and then hung out at home the rest of the day, and then yesterday we taught Sunday school and then did odd jobs around the house and ran some errands.

Time to start another week! But you know what awesome thing I have to look forward at the end of this week? A scrapbooking getaway with my friends!!! We are leaving Saturday morning and not coming back until Sunday afternoon…24 hours of scrapbooking. I of course will not spend that much time on it, but it will be fun to get away with the girls!