A Little More Than Halfway Through

Ok so it's been almost two months since I last posted, and a lot has happened!  I'm more than halfway through my time on the road-- 82 days in and 64 days left-- and here's where we've been so far:

Texas - Midland, Houston, and Denton/Dallas
New Mexico - just over the border, to say we'd been there
Louisiana - just stopped in Monroe for a couple nights
Mississippi - driven through several times, stopped on the road for food
Alabama - Huntsville, Birmingham, Albertville/Guntersville
Georgia - Atlanta/Fayetteville/Buckhead
Tennessee - Memphis and Chattanooga
South Carolina - Greenville and Elgin
Arkansas - Hope, Fayetteville, soon to be in Little Rock
Kentucky - Louisville
Indiana - West Lafayette
Illinois - Chicago/Naperville
Wisconsin - Green Bay (for the Packers-Saints season opener)
Oklahoma - OKC and Tulsa
North Carolina - Nantahala River area

That's a lot of hotels!  We're racking up points everywhere we go; I just wish I could use points towards my rent once I'm back in Chicago lol.

Today we worked an event around Tulsa, a Native American (or American Indian, depending on the individual) business summit.  It was indoors and we only had about 1/6 of our event site set up but we met some cool people so it was pretty fun.  I've never spent time around Native American areas-- which is a lot of what Oklahoma seems to be, Trail of Tears and all-- but it was fascinating to meet some Cherokees and learn a little about what their life is like.  Afterwards we made the drive to Oklahoma City so we can have tomorrow off.

Once I got to OKC I made a Target run.  Since we'll be here for a few days and then in Little Rock for a few days I decided to go ahead and buy some food.  I already love the Special K cereals and bars, and I really really need to shed some weight, so I figured I'd give the Special K Challenge a try.  I haven't been able to workout in about a month since I had a bad sinus infection and cough that put me out of commission for over two weeks.  Ugh.  I'm so glad to be done with that!

I'm going to do everything I can to at least squeeze in a 30 minute workout every day, and do a full hour or more if I have the time.  It's just really challenging to workout and eat well when every day and every week bring such different days!

Tomorrow I'm planning to drive up to Tulsa in the morning to check out Oral Roberts University, the school that my boyfriend Josh used to attend.  Then I'm throwing in some laundry, having lunch-- a Special K protein shake-- and taking a nap :)  So excited to just kick back and relax!

H-Town aka Houston

--Monday, 8/1--

We left Midland and drove to Houston, since Jeffry's from there and has friends & family there too.  We got to sleep in a little bit and then drove several hours to our hotel in Houston, which was ok but wasn't anything spectacular.  The fun thing though, was that Molly and I had adjoining rooms!  This was awesome because we usually only have rooms across the hall or down a few doors from each other.  We let Jeffry go out with his peeps and had a girls' night in "our" room.  We looked up a Chinese restaurant and called in some delish delivery.  We watched the season finale of the Bachelorette because Molly had been watching all season (it was my first episode) and whatever else we could find on TV and then called it a night.

--Tuesday, 8/2--
We got complimentary breakfast in the restaurant because Molly has platinum hotel points :)  After breakfast, the three of us went to Memorial Park and went for a walk around their 3-mile path.  It was over 100 degrees but such a nice park and a great way to knock out 300+ calories!  And I wore my Reebok Easy Tones to get as much of a workout as possible.  Once we got back to the hotel and showered, we went to the Galleria Mall to pick up a few things and allow Jeff to meet up with an old friend.  While Jeff caught up with Holly, Molly and I went around to do some work on the mall.  I really wanted some peacock feather earrings, and I found some!  I also got a gold bracelet with a pink flower and pearls, a yellow and navy plaid western shirt, a coral and white striped tank, some Pink perfume and a couple basic tees.  On our way home from the mall, Molly and I stopped at Firehouse Subs-- where I got a sweet plastic fire hat-- and brought our sandwiches back to the hotel in time for Teen Mom and Shark Week.

--Wednesday, 8/3--
Such a fun day!  We had the day off so we bought some online passes and drove about an hour to Galveston Island to check out Schlitterbahn Waterpark.  Soooo much fun!! There were a ton of awesome slides-- with sharp drops, twists and turns, solo, inner tube, you name it-- plus a fantastic "lazy" river that was full of waves and general awesomeness.  There was even a swim up bar!  The only downside was when we heard a lifeguard's whistle blow a few times and saw him holding his fist in the air.  We didn't know what it meant, so we asked him--and immediately jumped out of the water.  Note: if you ever see a pool lifeguard with his fist in the air like Rocky, or like a Jersey Shore fist without the pumping-- it means someone went #2 in the pool!  Ewww it was so gross!  We decided it was time to go after that... Once we got back to the hotel, Jeff met up with his friends and Molly and I had our girls' night again, ordering Chinese delivery from a different (closer) restaurant and watching child abuse in sequins Toddlers & Tiaras.

Flying Into DFW & Midland, TX

--Thursday 7/28--
My flight left O'Hare at 9am.  Since my Daddy used to travel for work, he drove me and dropped me off.  Of course my huge bag weighed 8 lbs more than the weight limit, so I spent about 15 minutes trying to load the heaviest things into my purse and carry-on tote so I could re-weigh (a couple times) my suitcase.  Thankfully traffic was about as expected, so I had plenty of time to check my bag at the curb and continue on through security.  While we boarded on time, there were a couple delays in taking off and landing, though somehow we seemed to get into Dallas-Fort Worth about when we were supposed to.  After picking up my suitcase from the baggage claim, I headed outside to get picked up by my new teammates, Molly and Jeffry.  From the first 5 minutes together, we got along great.  The three of us stopped by a local Mexican restaurant for some lunch, and then hit I-20.  Six-ish hours later, we arrived in Midland, TX.

Yep, that's Midland! And the big open corner just to the upper left of Midland is New Mexico =)

Once we checked in, we had a couple errands to run.  We found a FedEx to ship some stuff back to the MW office, then stopped at Walmart to grab bread, cheese, lunch meat, Pringles, Mic Ultra and other necessities for the weekend (to save money instead of eating out every meal).  On our way back to the hotel, we stopped at Jason's Deli-- a first for me!-- for dinner.  Mmmm so good!  After dinner, we tossed a few beers in our rolling cooler and headed out into the warm, starry night for some poolside chatter before bed.

--Friday 7/29--
First thing in the morning, we went downtown Midland to set up our full event site for the 3-day Blues fest and met our super awesome Verizon contact, JC.  Once Molly, Jeffry and I finished assembling all the pieces of our site, we had a couple hours to kill until we had to be back for the evening.  I took a little nap and freshened up, then the three of us met up and went back downtown for the first day of the Tall City Blues Fest.  We handed out premiums (koozies, mostly), answered questions and demo'ed phones & tablets for consumers.  That night when we got back to the hotel, we made some sandwiches for lunch the next day, threw a few more beers into the cooler and spent another night hanging out by the pool.

--Saturday 7/30--
It was a long day at the Tall City Blues Fest.  We weren't super close to the stages so we didn't have as many people coming through as we would've liked.  But it was fun to hear all the blues music from the main and community stages!  It was SUPER hot-- somewhere around 103 degrees-- but luckily most of the day was pretty cloudy and fairly windy.  I guess Midland gets a lot of wind and hasn't had rain in about a year.  Yikes!  At one point, the sky got super dark and felt like it was going to storm big time.  Instead of some thunder, lightning and rain, we got a mini dust storm.  We all threw on sunglasses and did our best to avoid it, but we did end up having to clean everything off again afterwards-- there was a layer of brown dust on every surface and device of our event site.  To keep cool throughout the day, we'd use the air conditioned restroom (and browse the little craft fair inside the Midland Center) and get the yummy Italian ice from this sweet older man.  It was a fun little festival, lots of families and tasty-smelling food vendors.  Later, once we'd closed up for the night, JC took Molly, Jeffry and me to dinner at a local Mexican restaurant called Abuelo's.  It was delicious and all of us ate WAY more than we should have :)  I got the three enchilada dinner, with one beef, one chicken and one spinach enchilada.  Soooo good!  After dinner, we went back to lounge (in our food comas) by the pool with the last few of our beers and some iTunes.

--Sunday 7/31--
The last day of the Tall City Blues Fest was a little slower.  It was a vendor-optional day, and the few vendors who remained for the third day had set up inside the air conditioned Midland Center.  Once the event was over and we had torn down our event site, we said goodbye to our new friend JC and headed back to the hotel, where we spent the rest of the afternoon laying out by the pool.  Even though I put on plenty of SPF 15 and kept reapplying SPF 4, I got fried like a lobster!  But it was fun to just relax and work on our tans :)  Eventually we got cleaned up and hopped in the car for a mini road trip-- to New Mexico!  None of us had been there before and it was only about an hour away, so we all agreed it would be a worthwhile way to spend the evening.  After taking pictures next to the "Welcome to New Mexico" and "Welcome to Texas" signs, we were super hungry for dinner.  We stopped at Pizza Hut, but the salad bar was totally picked over and our server informed us they were out of breadsticks and all crusts besides thin crust so we peaced outta there.  Luckily there was a Huddle House (like a Waffle House) just down the street, so we ate there.  It was actually pretty good!  We split a basket of mozzarella sticks and I had not expected them to be so tasty!  We had a fun time in the car on the way home and then we got back to our rooms to pack up and call it a night.

A few days down... A few months to go!

When I got the call from MW asking if I could step in to help with a Verizon Rule the Map team for two weeks, I jumped at the opportunity.  Since it had been about a month and a half since I came home from Detroit (where I did the same VzW RTM work) and I still didn't have a new job lined up-- and I love MW as a company-- I was thrilled to get the chance to work with another Map team and travel around for a couple weeks.

But it gets better.

About four days in, I got a second call from the MW office.  In a wonderful answer to my prayers, they asked how I was getting along with Molly and Jeffry-- and then asked if I'd want to stay on for the remainder of the tour.

In about a week's time, I went from being unemployed at my parents' house to having a full-time job in the south for the rest of 2011 :)

This blog will be a place for my friends & family to see where our RTM travels take us-- and to see how a Chicago girl handles the south!

Welcome aboard, y'all! (ok, too soon.)