Another Day in the Windy City

Most of you want to know how my first week in Chicago was. I have very mixed feelings and the answer to that question changes on a minute-to-minute basis.

I flew into Chicago on Saturday evening and started work Monday morning. Work is going pretty well. All the terms that I haven't heard for the four years that I have been out of the industry are slowly coming back to me. You may be able to relate to certain parts of that. You hear a term and you know you have heard it before and should know what it means but you don't at the moment you hear it. Then a couple hours or days later you start to remember. That is how this feels.

So, I am staying at Sara & Steve Hall's house. Sara was my boss at my last two jobs in Ann Arbor and is by boss at my current job in Chicago. We are trying to keep the fact that I am "sleeping with my boss" hush-hush (a.k.a. on the DL).

I am sleeping in Steve's office which is the second bedroom of their condo and where he works for an Ann Arbor firm during the weekdays. So this morning, right after my alarm goes off, Steve comes and knocks on the door. He tells me he has to be to work in 5 minutes (which, to remind you, is the room I am sleeping and storing all my stuff in). But in my AM, fuzzy head I thought he was telling me that I had to be to work in 5 minutes.

I thought maybe Sara had already left for work and called up to tell me to get my ass to work. So I rushed and didn't shower and after about 3 of those 5 minutes, I began to understand what Steve had said. So I went to work an hour early and used that hour to look for apartment listings online at my desk.

Then I had a somewhat uneventful day with a lot of meetings and work to be done, which is uneventful only because that is how every day has been thus far and I don't see the workload letting up anytime soon. Upon arriving back at the Condo building, which requires a pass to get into the building from the lobby, I found out that being on the guest list does not get you a copy of the keys (as Sara, Steve and I thought) but actually just gets you into the building out of the lobby and then you either need keys or the person you are visiting needs to be home.

Sara and Steve are in Michigan. And it is probably safe to say at this point, they are having a surprise Birthday Party for Steve. Sara is not answering her phone or checking her e-mail. I convinced the maintenance to let me into the building and assumed Steve would leave his keys on his desk, where he normally leaves them during the last week so that I can come and go, while they have been home. Not the case. He probably assumed that my name was on the guest list and they would give me a set of keys at the desk.

So now I am stuck in an apartment by myself. I have a dozen or so apartments to look at this weekend and my friend Matt is coming into town on the train from Lansing to help with the apartment search and hang out. It isn't like I had planned on putting him up in an apartment that wasn't mine, so that is good...He has a place to stay. But I need to get keys by tomorrow morning to meet him at the train station and look at these apartments.

Normally, your boss is the last person you want to hear from on the weekend. But, I am waiting on a call from Sara...So, if you see her, let her know!