First Business Trip

I'm writing this from a hotel room in Cary, NC.  Yes, I chose to stay in a hotel rather than stay at my parents or a friend's house.  It makes me feel like a little more of an adult... and let me tell you, ABB hooks us up.  Free meals, free drinks, and as if I don't already feel like a tiny person, they gave me a king size bed.  I seriously feel like three other people need to be in the bed with me.

The trip is a training event for the Power and Automation Leaders (PALs) rotational program that I am a part of.  It consists of visits to four ABBs in four days.

Yesterday, I worked in South Boston 6 hours, paid a visit to my parents, and checked into my hotel around 530.  Then the day really got started.  We kicked it off with a trainee only event at Natty Greene's brewery in downtown Raleigh.  I have to admit that I spent the day looking forward to a few Buckshots (it's a beer.. they haven't changed me that much in SoBo) on ABB's tab but was highly disappointed when they weren't serving Buckshot in the loft.  I met all of the current trainees and some of the former trainees as well.  After our boss left, we hit up a couple more bars even after he reminded us that "nothing good happens after midnight."

So it was a short night sleep before a looong day at the Cary office.  We spent most of the day listening to people talk about HR information, ABB products, processes, R&D, and many other things.  Quite frankly, I'm already sick of all of ABB's TLAs (three letter acronyms) and I've only been here two and a half months. 

I'm not saying that the 9.5 hours in the Cary office wasn't a ton of fun but I missed the most exciting thing to happen in South Boston since the Cantaloupe Festival.  As I'm sure you've heard, there was an earthquake in Virginia today.  The South Boston plant shook from the earthquake and was evacuated.  From what I hear, nothing was damaged but it was pretty entertaining to watch people.

After all of this, we had a very fancy dinner at Jimmy V's Steakhouse.  It was absolutely delicious but they probably could have rolled me out of there.

I got back to the hotel around 9 and snuggled up with my laptop to work even more!  I'm sure the South Boston people will have something to say about the emails I sent them at 10 PM when I return.

Anyways, it's been a very long day and hopefully I will actually be able to sleep tonight.  Tomorrow is another day, another ABB.