I guess its time to update...

So I don't know what my deal is but I have just not been in the mood to type up what happened in Chicago...or blog at all for that matter! So here is a brief run down of my trip!

Wednesday

Went to work at 6:30 so I could get caught up on everything before I had to leave and things would pile up again. We flew out at 2:30 and got into Chicago about 6:30. We took a shuttle to the Congress Plaza Hotel just right off Michigan Ave across the street from Grant Park.We hurried and got checked in and then took cabs over to the Park Hyatt where all the executives had a pretty awesome suite. We ate sandwiches and sang along to Frank Sinatra! Then we had one last meeting to go over details of the conference.


Thursday

Day 1 of eBay Live and boy was I in for a treat! We got up at the crack of dawn (literally) where we had one last group pow wow before leaving for the McCormick Convention center. Once we got there we hurried and got all the computers turned on and all the brochures and pins out so that we were ready for everyone. There were 100's of people lined up at the doors waiting to get in!My job was to sign people up for our 14 day free trial of our software HammerTap which is basically a Market Research Tool that will help you figure out how many other people are selling the same product on eBay, how much they are selling it for, the best day to end your listing on to maximize your profits and many other tools that will help you make the most money off of each auction you list. So there were 16 of us in our booth and other people would give the attendees a demo of the software and then I would get them signed up if they were interested. When no one was ready to be signed up it was my job to hand out flyers to people walking by and start up a conversation and get them interested in our software. It was busy all day long and we were on our feet walking around and talking for like 11 hours straight! By 5:30 I was dead tired and my throat was killing me...but the day went by fast!

Since it was so busy we didn't have time to leave the convention center for lunch so we had to eat in their cafeteria and boy was it expensive. I got the cheapest thing I could find...a boring green salad and it cost me a whopping $10.50!

Here is a picture of our booth (courtesy of Sean...although I brought my camera I very rarely remembered to actually use it!)


That night Sean, Jen, and I had tickets to go see Wicked! Sean and I decided just to walk to Ford Theater because it was only a couple blocks away and we didn't want to waste money on a cab ride. Let me just say...WICKED WAS AWESOME!!! I can't even tell you how exciting it was for me. I had every song memorized and the musical was way more amazing then I could have ever imagined! The actors were awesome as well (except for poor GA-linda hit a couple sour notes...didn't ruin my night though!) I will definitely be seeing this again...at least 4 more times!
Friday

Day 2 at eBay Live. Same as Thursday only not as busy. We did have a lot of people come who didn't want a demo they just wanted to sign up so that kept me busy! A couple of the speakers that were presenting on behalf of eBay were telling attendees about our software so that really helped get our name out there and get people excited about our software! During class times it would get dead so a couple of us were free to roam around the convention center and visit all the booths and stock up on free junk!

Today for lunch I had a turkey panini and it cost me $14.75...wowzer...there goes my perdium!

That night after the conference the whole group went to dinner at Giordano's a YUMMY pizza place! I had the opportunity to go there with my family last year when we visited Chicago after Mike got off his mission so I knew the pizza was to die for!
After pizza our CEO bought tickets for everyone to go on a Speedboat tour of Lake Michigan so we headed over to Navy Pier. It was fun to rip around the lake and see all the sights as the sun was setting behind the city buildings.

After the speedboat ride the CEO paid for us all to ride the huge Ferris Wheel. It had the potential to be very romatic...if I hadn't been with co-workers! It was still fun though!

So after all this we decided that it would be cheaper for 10 of us to share a limo than to have to pay for 3 cabs to take us back to our hotel. Well the ride was way squishy and there was no ventilation and about halfway to our hotel the driver starts smoking and totally gagged us out! It was seriously nasty...oh well it made for good memories!

While we were Chi-town guess who else was there?!?! Johnny Depp and Christian Bale! During the middle of the night they would close down the road in front of our hotel and film scenes for their new movie Public Enemies. Johnny Depp plays a gangster who escapes from prision using a bar of soap that he whittled in the shape of a gun and some black shoe polish.
I didn't actually take this picture I found it on Google Images. A couple of co-workers though stayed up until all hours of the night to catch a glimpse of him filming and see all of the old cars. I was way to tired to stand anymore! I'll just wait until the movie comes out to see it up close!

Saturday

Day 3 of eBay Live! It wasn't as busy as the first couple of days so we had more free time to run around and visit booths. It was exhausting though and by the afternoon my throat was killing me and I was sure I was going to lose my voice! About 30 minutes before the exhibit was suppose to close we started cleaning up and packing stuff up so that we wouldn't miss our plane! The second it hit 4 o'clock we all ran out the door to catch our shuttle. It took us an hour to get to the airport but we made it in time to make our flight because our flight was actually delayed about 45 minutes!

I ended up getting home in the middle of the night and poor Trent had to come pick me up! So he dragged Erika along and she was kind of grumpy! Of course her eyes lit up though when we got home and I dumped out all my treasures on the ground and let her rifle through them all! Here is a picture of my loot:
Since California is (or already has) going to pass a law where you will be charged if you don't bring your own grocery bags the re-usable grocery bags were all the rage and people were handing them out like candy!

Here is a picture of Erika wearing as much junk as she possibly can: