Just Another Day...

Yesterday was a typical Sunday...pretty uneventful. I slept until noon, and spent most of the day doing laundry and trying to pack. Yep, one more week in Milan, and I've managed to rack up a whole lot of crap that I have to figure out how I'm getting home. My suitcase is almost full at this point, and I still have clothes and gifts to put in it. Hmmm....not sure how that's going to work out. Last night, I attempted to plan out all the things I need to get for my apartment in Minneapolis but I got bored pretty quick (yeah, I'm in denial that I'm actually moving).
Today we had a team meeting at noon. I woke up at 11, and didn't even bother rushing to get out of the apartment. We saw Ale on her scooter while we were at the bus stop waiting for the 3 tram. I told you she's the only one who even attempts to show up on time. When we got to Bocconi, there were three people there (that's progress): Ale, Kathleen and Sabrina. But for some reason none of them were sitting together. I asked what was up with that and Ale claimed Kathleen was working on the presentation. My first thought was "uh oh, here we go"...clearly, their idea of a good presentation and mine are leap years apart so the idea of any of them working on that themselves made me nervous. But then we started talking about what we needed to accomplish, and it was a lot so I figured the divide and conquer strategy might actually work. For most of the afternoon, our core group (me, Rita, Ale, Ashley, and Sook) worked on editing the interview questions. We didn't get down to 10, but we made it to 13 questions, which I finally accepted b/c getting them to remove even one question was like pulling teeth. I kept having to remind them that in an hour, there's no way we're getting through all those 10 million questions, so even though all of the questions are important, we have to prioritize those that are most important. I think they were getting tired of me talking (lol), but the end product was good.
Around 1:30/2, Ashley started talking about how she needed food. The rest of us had brought our food, so she and Ale claimed they would run out to get food and bring it back. Yeah, right. An hour and a half later, they decide to roll back in, having clearly eaten. I just shook my head. Since I had spent most of the afternoon on my laptop doing personal stuff anyway, I wasn't even phased. After they got back, I called Shruti and Kathleen over so we could tackle the presentation. Surprisingly, the work they had been doing was productive and useful. They had incorporated some of the feedback from our presentation last week into a new powerpoint...and at least the few slides I saw, looked decent. Then they started trying to figure out how to divide the remaining changes among the group. Shruti kept asking "so who wants to do....", and she would look at me, and I'd look right back at her...and I'd go right back to what I was doing :-). I purposely didn't volunteer for anything. After they had given out assignments, Rita and I were the only ones with nothing to do. They gave Rita some assignment, then asked me what I wanted to do. I told them I'd tackle whatever was left, which involved getting data to support one of the claims about categories where luxury consumers are spending more. Simple enough. After the meeting was over, Rita, Ashley and I stuck around for a little while - primarily b/c we were each absorbed in our own personal activities and didn't want to be interrupted.
Rita and I finally left around 6 or so. After we got back to the apartment, I ran out briefly to the store to buy some tuna (making a pasta salad...yet again), then cooked. I'm about to watch another movie (Be Cool, or maybe Blood Diamond?) and just chill out. Tomorrow's plan is to wake up early, hit the market, then go to a couple of stores on the other side of Milan that I've been wanting to check out. My options were to spend 200 euros going to Rome or spend 200 euros shopping. Hmmm...I think I've opted to go shopping. Lol. Since this is my last shopping week, I've got to make it count. Ciao!