Day 20,297

Hello, my future grandchildren. Today is the second Friday in the month of April. I have been remiss in my blog posts the last couple of days, and, although I owe no one an apology, I think a little explanation is in order.

I was travelling on business. Tuesday I hopped on a plane to Chicago, and arrived early in the afternoon. I had a pretty free-and-easy day, with some free time, and I posted after I arrived at my hotel.

My hotel was hosting a convention. It really doesn’t matter what segment of the world they represented, but I can tell you under no uncertain terms, that the folks involved in this event seemed to be a whole lot more interested in their next round than they were with learning anything new.

It was noisy at my hotel.

Add in that I had enough adrenaline pumping through my brain to ensure that I was going to toss and turn all night. And I paid for it later in the day on Wednesday.

Wednesday morning I got up and got going in short order. I ordered an Uber ride to take me downtown ( my hotel was out by the airport), and I did have some time to chill out and maybe even nap a little bit before we hit the training site, Microsoft’s office in the Aon Center (and that has a personal touch of irony for me, seeings how I went to high school with the guy that is the current president and CEO of Aon.. I know, right?).

I arrived early, but I realized very early in the day that I had made one serious mistake – I forgot to bring a coat to Chicago. It had been in the mid-70’s when I left Kansas City on Tuesday, and was the same in Chicago when I arrived. Sadly, the weather didn’t hold. Wednesday was about as gray, cold, wet, and gloomy as anybody would expect in the Windy City.

So, I’m dressed like I’m going to hit golf balls after work – khaki slacks, golf shirt with the Microsoft logo on the left breast – and I have no coat. Fortunately, it was a short walk to the office from the drop-off point, so that was no real problem.

It wasn’t too long after I arrived at the office that I started getting some texts from the lead instructor for the day. Apparently, when it came to drawing straws for the Uber drivers circling O’Hare, she had drawn the short straw. While I had a guy that knew the importance of getting me to my destination on time and in good shape, she drew the short straw and ended up with a guy that knew as much about driving in downtown Chicago as an anemone knows about designing an airfoil. She was going to be late.

Fortunately, I was there and I knew what needed to be done to get things rolling. I signed off on the catering, and set my system up to by the display system and start the class for the client. The third trainer (yes, there were three of us total) helped me out with some of the settings on my Surface Book 2 that I was unfamiliar with, having had guys babysit me for years while I was with Centriq Training. I never had to set up a thing, and I have to admit, in retrospect, that spoiled me a bit.

The primary showed up right at 9, and we switched stuff up, and got rolling. It went just fine, as the client attendees were running a few minutes behin as well.

We had our class, and things went just fine. I stepped out to take a call later in the afternoon, and things were wrapping up in the classroom as my call completed.

Waiting outside the Aon Center at 5 o’clock for an Uber was not pleasant. I froze my butt off.

But, my driver showed, got me back to the hotel where I picked up luggage, then took the airport shuttle over to O’hare to catch my flight later that evening.

I might’ve caught a bug, or maybe I was just too tired, but yesterday wasn’t a great day for me. The primary instructor apologized, saying she might’ve picked up and spread a bug around, and that I might’ve caught a dose of that.

OK. I’m home safe now, I hit my six hundred word count to make up for a couple days in absentia. Now I need to post and refill my coffee before my 9:00 call with my manager.

Peace y’all.