The highly anticipated post-Chicago blog

I went. I saw. It kicked my ass.

I went to Chicago from November 29 - December 5. Purpose of said trip was to represent the NN/LM (National Network of Libraries of Medicine) at the RSNA Annual Meeting (Radiological Society of North America). In short - RSNA pays for volunteers to come to Chicago for the meeting, work at the NN/LM exhibit booth and teach classes in PubMed. Free trip to Chicago to do something I do every day anyhow, sign me up!

(note to self: nothing is free)

I got in to town early afternoon on Saturday the 29th. Early enough that I couldn't yet check into my hotel. Luckily for me one of my most favorite people alive (Hi Stef!) lives there. I was planning to spend time with her later in the day anyhow. Since I couldn't get into a room just yet I got to see her even earlier. I headed up to her place to see the new digs, and to meet Lu. I LOVE Stef's apartment - it is immediately next to my favorite Chicago building, the famous pink building, Edgewater Apartments. Lu is amazingly cute and I hope to see her again when she's not recovering from kitty surgery and has a little more spunk.

We hung out for a bit at her place then headed back downtown to my hotel (Embassy Suites on State) so I could check in and we could get some lunch. Lunch we did, and shop we did. It started out as a simple trip to find The Body Shop to get her some lotion. It turned into a shopping fest not to be rivaled this century. Being Thanksgiving weekend though we managed to score some good deals. Finally we parted ways so I could get ready for my first day of hell, er um, exhibiting.

I was told to be at McCormick Place by 8am and not a minute later. No stress there, huh? All things considered I got up, got ready and made it to McCormick in plenty of time. It was day one of what was going to prove to be a very trying week. First thing after I got there I was sent to the classroom where one of the other volunteers was teaching. Each of the 6 days a different volunteer taught either basic or advanced PubMed, depending on their skill level. I taught advanced. My assigned day to teach was Friday, the last day of the conference. More about that later. Every other day we worked at the exhibit booth sucking people in to tell them about the changes to PubMed.

Needless to say it was a week of pure hell. Being up at 615 to make it to McCormick by 8 every day to exhibit until 5. Remember that "free" trip to Chicago? Right. I worked my ass off all week. Tuesday was my day "off" and I wasn't even able to sleep in. Though all I did all day was have lunch and go to Shedd Aquarium (a tradition of mine). Had fun at Shedd, though sadly it was a bit disappointing. Since being at Georgia Aquarium a couple years ago not much compares. Anyhow, Tuesday was nice to be away but it made getting up and going back on Wednesday that much harder.

Tuesday actually turned out to be a relatively interesting day. Early in the week I'd buddied up one of the other volunteers who was also at the Embassy Suites. He's actually someone that I'll remain very close with no matter what. One of the perks of being at the Embassy Suites is that from 530-730 every night is the "manager's reception" aka free booze. Rick and I drank faithfully every night from about 6 until 730. Tuesday night we drank a lot. A LOT. So much so that we both were pretty lit. Luckily for him he was off Wednesday. I had to go back to the conference at 8am the next day!

I had a rather sobering experience after I got back to my room on Tuesday night though. In early October I'd submitted an abstract to a meeting that I didn't think I had a snowball's chance in hell of being asked to present. Well, late Tuesday night I got an email inviting me to present my paper. Ho-lee-shit. I'll copy the message in another blog and elaborate a bit more there. Needless to say I sobered up instantly and didn't have a prayer of sleeping that night either. How can one be expected to sleep after getting news like that?? Wednesday I got up and back to the grind though. It was a long day because Rick was off and I was in a total Twilight Zone state of mind after getting the notice the night before.

Thursday sucked because it was long and boring and things were coming to a close at the conference. Friday was pure hell. Let me elaborate...

Conference hours were 8-1230. My class (that I was teaching) was from 1030-12. I was leaving Chicago at 353p. That meant I had to be up and take all my luggage with me to McCormick on a shuttle bus, be coherent enough to teach my class (that ended up having just under 70 participants), and then race out of the class to get a shuttle to get to Ohare on time. Rick helped me in the morning with my luggage but afterwards it was all up to me.

Then - it turns out where I was told to catch the shuttle to the airport wasn't an active spot anymore. Since it was the last day of the conference they'd cut down on stops since there was less people. That meant several frantic calls to the company to find out wtf I was supposed to be. Luckily I wasn't the only one who had the problem and another guy actually knew where the other stop was so he got us there in time. I thought everything would be okay then.

Wrong.

Get to Ohare, get checked in, cough up another $15 for my luggage to go back and get something to eat. Walk all over gate F because my gate assignment changed a couple times (grr, I'd done enough walking on Friday already!), then chill out until time to take off. We board on time, things are good - until maintenance gets on the plane to say something is frozen and needs fixed before we can take off. At least it wasn't something super major but it still delayed us by a half hour. I wouldn't have cared except I made arrangements for someone to pick me up at the airport in Akron and it was going to inconvenience them. Fortunately my friends are understanding and didn't mind.

I was afraid that to top off the already crappy week and super stressful day that my luggage would end up lost or something, but it made it, I made it, and I was home by 8pm. I was really happy to be home.

So happy that I haven't even taken my photos off my camera yet, 2 days later.

I'm sure there's things I am forgetting but I'm too blah to even re-read this and correct any irregularities.

Another blog coming with the invite to present mentioned above...