Since I've been home.......

So I've been home now for about four or five days and it's been sooooooo nice! You forget how nice it is to sleep in your own bed. Here are pictures from Luke's wedding and my birthday dinner out with Denise, Holly, and Ash and Biaggi's the other night.

Me and Jen.
Amy and I

Nichole and I

Jackie and Luke

Jacks, me and Jen

These two are so funny. I was trying to come up with a good pose. I failed miserably!

Luke and Leisa

Ash and Holly. This was the second picture because Holly always dips her chin on the first take!

D & I. This was the first of three. D always closes her eyes!

Finally Home!!!!!

So I left Springfield, MO yesterday at 6pm and got home after midnight last night. Long week, but I'm finally home through at least Monday. Woo hoo! I have like five days home in a row! I haven't done that for over two months now, so it will be a nice break!

Have to run a ton of errands since I haven't been home for over a week and a half. Need to go get the drivers license updated! :-) Don't want to be traveling with an expired one any longer!

I honestly don't quite know what to do with myself since I'm used to being with reps nonstop in a car. The catch up time will be nice!

New Record!

So I realized yesterday that I made a new record for myself. I managed to be in four cities in one day! I started out in Cleveland, OH then flew into Detroit, MI to catch a connecting flight to Bloomington. When I got into Bloomington I hopped in a rental car and drove to St.Louis, MO because it was halfway to Springfield where I'm at for the next two days. I just realized as I'm typing this that not only was it four cities in one day but four states in one day! Gotta love life on the road! :-)

Note to Self

Never travel with an expired license!!!! I don't know if you can see on my license, but it expired on my birthday, the 7th. I've been traveling since my birthday and didn't even think about it until I arrived at the airport today. Apparently an expired license makes them suspect you like they would a terrorist and you get padded down at every turn and a special selectee stamp on your ticket. Can't wait to fly home on Wednesday! :-)

So I arrived in Cleveland around 10:30pm Eastern time and the third shift shuttle driver for the hotel decided not to show, so I had to take a cab. The cab driver was mad that I was going such a short distance so he drove like a maniac the entire way to the hotel to the point I was hanging on for dear life around turns and didn't even bother to help me get my bags out of the car. You would think he'd just be happy for the business but apparently not. I've experienced the same rude behavior at O'hare when I park about two minutes from the airport. Apparently the $13 the cab driver made tonight in his less than 10 minutes of work was not satisfactory! :-)

I got my keys for the room and headed up to the 2nd floor. I drag my suitcase and laptop bad all the way to the end of the hall just to find out that neither one of my keys work. I come back downstairs to take the front desk guy away from his cartoons and web surfing to have him re-program my keys! Then I go to turn on the tv and the remote won't work, so I'm totally doing old school style having to change the channels at the tv and turn up and down the volume. I can tell already it's going to be a great travel week! :-)

My New Home!

So this is about my fourth week on the road and I am worn out!!! :-) I come home, take out old clothes, pack new clothes and I'm back out there again. Hopefully it will slow down just a little in about a week, but for now it's going to be nuts!

I had to laugh though tonight because I went to Maggianos to pick up carry out for dinner. I order Rigatoni D, garlic bread, and two bottles of water. So she hands me my food and I walk out thinking nothing of it.

I get back to the hotel and I have an ENTIRE loaf of bread and a side of marinara sauce large enough to feed a family! I thought how much did this lady think I was going to eat?!

Then I pull out my Rigatoni D and there is no fork or napkins. So I'm trying to figure out how to eat my pasta. My mom suggested using my hair pick(after washing it of course), but the idea of that seemed crazy so I ate with my fingers. For the napkins I went scrounging through the coffee maker stuff and found two packages that each had a napkin in them. I was very pleased with myself to have found that. So no worries I can eat with my fingers.

Now I get thirsty. Maggianos apparently thinks they need to be all fancy and gives me two fancy glass bottles of water. I should have told them that two bottles of Ice Mountain would have sufficed but maybe it's part of the experience which so far isn't that great seeing that I'm eating pasta with my fingers! :-)

So anyway, I grab the bottle and try to twist off the cap, however it's not a twist off cap! Now why would you have bottles of water for carry out that require a bottle opener to get into. I don't know about you, but what in the world in a hotel room can you use to open a bottle cap?! So I got creative and got out my eyebrow plucker. My eyebrow plucker is busted but I got my bottles of water open! :-)

Green Bay

So for my birthday, Keith and I went to Green Bay for the Green Bay Packers vs Bears game. We had a great time! Lambeau Field is amazing at night and the fans are crazy! There is so much Nostalgia there that it was almost surreal just to be there and be around 70,000 crazed fans. The game was really exciting and unfortunately for Keith the Packers lost after starting the year with a 4-0 season, but we still had a good time.

We stopped and had lunch in Milwaukee on the way up and did a beer tasting. They were pretty much all nasty. I was trying to decide which one to try first.

We watched the Cubs lose and some dive bar in town but the pizza was good!

The famed Lambeau Field.

Our tailgating friends for the day.

We actually are there! It was an awesome evening! Very cool under the lights!

The Wisconsin marching band played throughout the game. They were really good.

Final score! :-(

My First Regional Manager Week

So this was my first week doing actual regional manager stuff. I'm in St. Louis currently traveling with one of my reps. It was fun and terrifying all at the same time. These reps are now looking to me for answers and guidance and at times I feel like I'm ill equipped for the job.

Also, I still haven't gotten this job down yet. I started working on e-mail at 6am. Working on returning e-mails, expense reports, activity reports, etc. I worked on them all the way to St. Louis yesterday and all day while I was in the car driving from dealer to dealer. We finished around 6pm and recapped till about 7pm and then I headed to the airport. After being on the phone with one of my new reps for an hour, I spent the next five hours on the computer catching up on e-mails. I think I finally went to bed around 1am.

I have a bad feeling that I am not going to have a life for the next year! I'm glued to my blackberry because if I'm not I get too far behind! I NEED A VACATION! :-) JK

On the Road Again

So I'm getting a chuckle out of myself this morning because I'm surrounded by gadgets in my car this morning. I left for St. Louis this morning to travel with one of my reps and will be down here till Thursday.



I brought my laptop so I could obviously work while I'm on the road and then I have to have my air card so I can access the internet while I'm in the car. To be able to have power for my laptop in the car, I have to have an AC adapter. Then I have my cell phone/blackberry. I haven't quite figured it out yet because now my work e-mail comes to my blackberry and on my computer. Half the time I can't figure out where it goes so I'm checking it both places.

In addtion to all that stuff, I got an Ipod for my birthday from my parents so I brought that with me so I could program songs on it. Because I had too much music on my laptop bogging it down, I bought an external hard drive to transfer the music over to.

All this in the car with me! Ok, so it's not funny now that I type it out but I looked ridiculous yesterday driving down here with cords hanging all over me and gadgets setting all over my car! :-)