A Crazy Week

So last weekend was a doozy. All those plans I mentioned in my last post? Did not happen. I went out Saturday during the day and ran some errands, but when I got back home the change in weather had finally taken over me and I was just a sick mess. I laid down around 3 or 4pm and slept for a few hours, then I woke up, took some medicine and called one of my coworkers to find out what time our other coworkers house party event was starting. I talked to my cousin for a minute then went back to sleep. When I woke up again, it was 11:30 Sunday morning. And I still felt like crap. I had run out of medicine, so I dragged myself out of bed and went to SuperTarget since I had a Target gift card and would be able to knock out medicine and food in one trip. I went in ST with a list of about 15 things (mostly ingredients for recipes since I'm trying to cook more), and about an hour into my trip, I had added maybe one thing from the list to my cart. I have a tendency (even when I'm sick as a dog) to walk into Target intending to buy a handful of things and walk out with $100 worth of stuff. This was no exception (although the gift cards lessened the dent in my wallet). When I got home I spent the rest of the evening either on the phone or knocked out.
This week at work has been a very crazy week. This was our first week of core training, and the internal promotes joined our core buyer group so there were some new faces. They seem nice so far but many of them are typical Minnesotans (married w/ kids) so they're not so big on the after work happy hours and events. We're trying to plan an event next week which starts earlier so they can come. From this point on, our training is highly separated with us Softlines folks taking a lot of classes separate from the rest of the group so I don't see a lot of the other new buyers as often. And we have a project that we will be working on over the next several weeks which is supposed to simulate our actual roles as buyers, and we even have an official presentation next week. Whoa. As if training wasn't busy enough, this was also a busy week for my department with a lot of key business meetings going on. For example, apart from two hour long training classes, I spent my entire day today split between two meetings. They were long. But very informational. I also decided to attend a brown bag lunch series sponsored by the African American Business Council, which was my first time attending such an event. First, I will say that I was very impressed by the diverse group of people who attended. Second, the topic was highly informational and relevant (it was about leveraging your strengths to be successful in your career). And finally, I was amazed that an event put on by "my people" actually began and ended on time! Go us! Seriously though, the last few days have been pretty hectic. Last night though we had our second dinner club event (we've decided to make it a monthly instead of weekly event) at this Vietnamese restaurant. It was my first time trying Vietnamese food but it was excellent! I had some type of shrimp and fried onions over cracked rice (whatever that is). It was spicy but it was really good. I like this dinner club idea - it forces me to get out to places I would never think to go. The area where the restaurant was is a strip which has a ton of restaurants, and its not even far from my apartment. Who knew?
After work today, I had planned to go to the Minneapolis Urban League Young Professionals meeting. I had joined the MULYP in New York several years ago but never really had time to get active due to work and all my b-school prep. So I wanted to try them out here. Except once I got home, I discovered that my television had arrived. Then all I wanted to do was set it up and lay out on my floor (I still don't have a sofa) and watch tv. Aaaggh. But unfortunately, I didn't have a "coaxial cable" (I learned that from my brother today - I called him to find out what "that thingie is that you use to connect your tv to the antenna"). So, since I had to leave to go to Ace Hardware anyway, I decided I might as well go to the MULYP meeting. And in retrospect, I'm so glad I went! You know how that always happens - when you don't want to go somewhere, but then once you go you have such a good time you can't believe you didn't want to go in the first place? Well it was one of those moments. The meeting was an intro meeting geared for those considering membership, and I had expected a larger crowd (there were about 8 of us who were not current members) but everyone there was so nice and down to earth. They have about five projects going on, several of which sounded very interesting to me, so I'm planning to send in my membership information and officially join. The first part of the meeting was mostly introductions and an overview of the organization, then there was a networking period (I met another new person from Trenton - yay tri state area! - and he said he knows a puerto rican guy at Target who is from Yonkers...he said he would put me in touch with him...that got me very hyped!). The funny thing is, of the 20 or so people in the room, only one was from the Minneapolis/St Paul area - the rest of us are transplants, lol. I got into a discussion with the chapter president and she said that us African Americans unfortunately do not stay in Minneapolis largely because of "difficulties finding a mate" (her words, not mine, lol). What a surprise. The last part of the meeting was spent reflecting on 9/11. A number of folks shared their memories of that day, and although I have a very personal story, I just couldn't bring myself to share it. The whole thought of 9/11 brings back too many bad memories. It's one thing to see something on tv, but it's a whole other thing to experience it. Even sitting in that room hearing people talk about it almost brought me to tears.
Anyway, this weekend I'm in Chicago and I'm VERY excited. I'm not sure if I'm excited to go to Chicago or if I'm just excited to get out of Minneapolis. Probably a little of both. I'll let you all know how it goes.