Working again!

I arrived in Baltimore yesterday and will be here until tomorrow night. I will be back here all week next week as well. It's strange going back to not only working again, but back to the standard consultant habit of working at night when you get back to the hotel room or getting up at 6 am to work.

So when I got here yesterday, one of the project leads pulled me into a meeting that was already going on so that I could meet some people. This included the system CFO and a couple of other directors of this huge health system. The CFO was on the phone via conference, and while this project lead was introducing me to him, he said something like "she is much better looking than I am so you'll enjoy working with her".

Um? Can I just say WTF and completely inappropriate? I was kind of embarrassed but more embarrassed for him because I think the other people in the room were thinking "huh?" as well.

The interesting thing about consulting is that you get put on a wide variety of projects with a wide variety of project directors and principals. It's an opportunity to see a wide variety of facilitation, leadership, and communication styles, both good and bad. You get to see how you should or should not run things in 5-10 years time.

I've been with several meetings now with the other project lead (not the one from yesterday), and while she is incredibly brilliant and has a wealth of information in this space, she is not very good at listening to the client. She also is not great at asking clear and direct questions. Her questions run 5 minutes where she adds in all this side information so you've forgotten what her original question even was.

So what have I learned so far? Don't comment on colleagues physical appearances, how not to communicate with clients, and that this area has good sushi. Good lessons, eh?

What day is it again?

Geez, its been a while since I posted here. When you're not working, every day kinda bleeds into the next and without even realizing it, a week passes by. Most of the time I am unsure what day of the week it is, since every day is the same.

I did find out earlier this week that I will probably be sent to Maryland a bit over the next couple of weeks for a small project. The thought of having to actually work all day and wake up early... wow do I even remember how to do that? :p

Some insightful, thought provoking, and funny quotes that I came across that each speak to me and my life right now in some way or another.

And this last one just cracks me up:

Still hanging around

So I am still not laid off. Crazy. Seriously if the leadership here really knew what the heck they were doing, we should have gone two weeks ago. I actually heard from my coach/mentor yesterday that the new person we report to even wants to do some sort of strategy session here in Chicago in the next few weeks.

Does this change anything? Not really. Just means we may have even longer to look for other jobs. I'm still trying to decide what the heck I want to do next. There is this one consulting firm that seems to have taken a interest in my coach as well as myself. They're a much smaller firm, with only like 100 healthcare consultants. The only drawback is that they would require relocation to either Boston, DC, or Seattle.

If I could pick a city just on the city itself, I would probably pick Seattle. But I'm really torn with how much further that is from my parents in North Carolina. I don't know. Also I think Seattle is much more expensive real estate wise than Chicago. I doubt I could afford the same type of condo I have now. Though perhaps salaries there would account for the higher cost of living.

Anyways, an eerie pic from after the blizzard last week. A bunch of cars ended up getting stuck and abandoned on Lake Shore Drive. Talk about the apocalypse part of snowpocalypse!