Busy, busy, busy.

I've been pulled into a new job with work at the moment. Again, it's in Chicago, and again, it's actually outside Chicago, which means a lot of traveling, and not much of actually seeing the US. It's a full-on job, with 12 hour days being pretty standard. Not only is it not in my area of expertise, it's not anything I've ever done before. That's good from the perspective of broadening my experience, but it would be nice to actually get in and do what I flew half way around the world to do. I'm assured that's coming.

One of the cool things about working in the Chicago area is the winter weather. It's by no means pleasant to be in, but they got some serious snow this year in exactly the same way that New York didn't. The first day I was on site (Monday), it snowed outside all day. It was pretty cool to be doing what we were doing, but at the same time feeling like we were on holidays in a chalet at some ski resort. That's my fantasy anyway, and I'm sticking to it. They had a meeting which hadn't been covered in Germany, so with 26 hours' notice, I was on a plane to Germany. This meant booking flights, getting back to the hotel in Lincolnshire, Illinois to check out, getting to the airport back to New York to get my passport and to repack for a week and a half trip and hit the airport. Things are pretty tight. I assume there's a really good reason I'm going, but the project team has been so frantic, I'm not actually sure why I'm going.

On the positive side though, company policy is to fly Business Class for all travel outside the US, Canada and Mexico, so Business Class it is. I'm flying Lufthansa to Frankfurt, landing at 6am. I have to meet up with the client in Wiesbaden at 8am, so I'm hoping things go according to schedule. If I'm delayed in any part of the trip, the wheels are going to fall off very quickly.