Downloaded some new iTunes songs this morning. Listening to "The Diary of Jane" by Breaking Benjamin.

Chicago was fun, although the fun and glamor of travelling for work is definitely gone. I don't know how people do it because it really is very tiring, but it does have its perks. On Tuesday July 18, I went to the hotel gym and worked out for 30 minutes then sat in the jaccuzzi for 1/2 an hour.

Now listening to "The Kill" by 30 seconds to Mars

In morning, I went to the front desk to get a cab to take me to the conference at the Swissotel in downtown Chicago, and instead I get a car and a driver. Talking about living the high life. My driver was nice and gave me his mobile number in case I wanted to have dinner later that night. I thought that it was pretty funny that my driver guy was hitting on me.

I wasn't sure how people were going to dressed for this conference and was going to go very business casual, but at the last minute I decided to pack a couple of normal work outfits for me which is a silk skirt, shirt and sweater. Sure enough, I get to the conference and most of the guys are in suits and so are the women. I felt appropriately dressed and was glad.

There was a cocktail party after the first day and I indulged myself and had a couple of glasses of wine, and then the three women I ended up talking to invited me out for dinner and we took a cab to Navy Pier to have dinner and to see the fireworks show.

Navy Pier is right in downtown Chicago and was only built in the last five years. It's kind of like SF's Pier 39 but much more fun because they are more things to do. They had this huge ferris wheel which we all went on. For $5 you get on and go around once. The ferris wheel never stops so you have get and get off fairly quickly. It offers some amazing views of downtown Chicago which was very cool at night.

Now listening to "Beautiful Soul" by Jesse McCartney

From Navy Pier, you can take boat cruises. If I ever go back to Chicago again, I'd like to take an architectural boat tour of Chicago. It's weird because it looks like Chicago is on an ocean coast but it's on the shores of Lake Michigan. I never quite noticed that about Chicago before.

We at some restaurant called "Riva's" and then saw fireworks but it started to sprinkle so we cabbed back to the Swissotel. Those sprinkles were a bad sign but I didn't know it yet.

Thursday morning I'm watching the morning Chicago local news and it's storming and causing quite a traffic mess. The conference ended and I'm at O'Hare at 5:30 pm and the place is a zoo and a half. The thunderstorms closed down O'Hare for most of the day. Some girl told me they had only allowed three flights all day. My 8 pm flight back to SF was delayed and if I was thinking right, I should have realized that since the two fights in front of mine were delayed that my flight would be delayed as well, and that I should have tried to go standby on one of the earlier flights.

But I wasn't thinking and the monitor up until 7:30 pm said our flight was on time. What a joke! My flight didnt' take off from Chicago till 11:30 pm and we touched down in San Francisco at a little after 2 am.

Now listening to "Leave the Pieces" by The Wreckers. It's a country song and I only purchased it because I was perusing the iTunes top 100 list and playing every song and I liked this one instantly.

I had already decided to take a cab from the airport to home because my original flight was arriving at 10:30 pm and I didn't want to be stuck in Super Shuttle hell getting home. So at 3 am I was in bed and wondering what time should I get to work in the morning because it wasn't going to be early. I made it into the office by 11 am, and only went in because I had some analysis due that afternoon. Otherwise I think I would have just stayed home.

I was telling someone about my flight back from Chicago and they told me that if I arrived in SF at 2 am, with the time change, it whould have 4 am in Chicago, so I was basically up for almost 24 hours as I had gotten up at 5:30 earlier that morning.

So that was Chi-Town Trip. I was still in recovery all this week and my suitcase is still out waiting to be put away. I'm thinking it must get easier if you travel all the time because then you get into a routine. Travelling by plane somewhere almost feels like commuting if it weren't for the time change I think. I never used to think way and it's only lately that I've equated plane flights with commuting and thinking it's really not bad, except for waiting to get on a plane at the airport of course.