The title of this post is deceiving. A co-worker and I had to go to AJAX training this past week. The training was billed as being in Chicago, but it was actually in the Chicago suburbs in a town called Schaumburg. Nothing exciting going on there, let me tell you. The class was through Learning Tree and it was quite informative. We checked out some nice restaurants for supper each day, Benihana being the most interesting one. And we trekked over to the Woodfield Mall after class the one day. The evenings were pretty boring, though–I didn’t have room for my laptop in my luggage. Next time, I’ll wear the same clothes all week if I have to, but I’m not leaving my laptop at home.
Our trip out of Pittsburgh wasn’t the best. Everything was running on time, but right when we were about to take off, it was announced that all flights going in and out of O’Hare were grounded due to weather. So, we sat in the plane on the tarmac for 90 minutes (the length of the flight was only supposed to be 90 minutes) and then finally took off. But, there was more bad weather and we had to fly around it, so we ended up being in the plane for a total of 4 hours.
The trip home went just fine, but the hours leading up to it were another story. Our flight was not until 9:10PM last night (central time). Our class let out at 2PM. You do the math. There was a nice atrium in the building our class was held in, so we sat there for a while and read. Then we headed back to the hotel for a while and sat in the lobby and read. Finally, it was time to get the taxi to the airport. Getting through security took a while. And the place was very crowded–evidently there were a bunch of canceled and delayed flights yesterday. And, while the Chicago O’Hare airport touted Chili’s as one of its restaurants, we only saw Chili’s Express vendors. Pretty much everything was fast food. Ick. I grabbed a salad from McDonald’s and called it supper. We sat around and people-watched after that and then headed over to our gate and waited to board the plane. The flight left on time and wasn’t too bumpy considering that it was pretty windy out. The only snag was when we hit Pittsburgh, we had to wait 15 minutes before we could get off the plane because the ground crew was working on another plane when we arrived. But, I wasn’t going to complain about that.
Brian picked us up and we finally made it home around 2:30AM. It was a long day. But, I’m glad to be home. I actually have to work today (can you believe it?) starting at our 11:00 staff meeting. Ugh. I’ll probably be face-down on the keyboard by 2:00.