Life's Better on a Bike

That's right, I broke down and purchased a mode of transportation. That mode of transportation is a bike, and seems to be pretty good and I got it for a good price.

I got tired of not being able to go where I wanted when I wanted. Yes, we can ask the hotel to take us places, but it's weird sometimes to ask them to take us to dinner or other places. We do get taken to the grocery store once a week, but I've only gone once.

Anyway, my bike took it's maiden voyage to Target on Friday, and worked out just fine. It's weird riding a road bike versus my normal mountain bike, but I got used it to real quickly.

This past week went by very quickly. Right now I am sitting and trying to upload my pictures from my past few weeks here. I am starting my fourth week here! The time is now flying by so quickly. I have so much to do at work this week that I hope I can get all of it done on time...far cry from me being really bored, right? haha.

This past week was a very busy one as well. Monday and Tuesday were normal days at work, but on Wednesday we had a "Career Development Forum" up at Abbott Park. It was a day for all of the interns in the country...which meant that there were 300 or so of us at this thing. I didn't realize how many of us there were from Cal Poly...about 9 or 10 I think. I'm one of two Biomedicals, and there's some Mechanicals, Industrials, and a Comp Sci. On that note, the entire day we were touted with the numbers that we were the top 3% of people who got Abbot interns. Apparently, 15,000 people applied for the job that I have!! And I thought that getting into college was hard. Much of the day was set aside to inform us of the Professional Development Program, which is a two year rotational program for recent grads. I have applied for it, and I do hope that I get the job, because moving around for a few years after college sounds amazing. However, getting into the PDP program is even harder than getting the internship. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Also at this Career Development Forum, we went to a few lectures. The first one I went to was on etiquette, specifically dinner etiquette while at business functions. The guy was really funny, and I did learn a lot. The second was on emotional intelligence, which was a very interesting topic. The man was talking about how by making our lives monotonous, we continually looking forward to something, whether it be the weekend, vacation, anything. And by doing that, we can't enjoy the life we are living now. So, break up the monotony, have fun at everything you (while it's easier said than done), and you can enjoy life more. This rang true with me, because it's like what I have been trying to get myself to do this past year. Earlier this year, I decided that by not sweating the small stuff, and by removing myself from some of the crazy ini my life, I can be a lot happier. And it's worked so far.

I worked over 40 hours this past week, but I'm applying the hours to next week so that I can leave early next Friday when my parents are in town. It was ok, because I still had a bunch of work to do. I moved desks on Tuesday, and I am not sure if I get more work done there or less work. I moved next to Keith, one of the other interns, and so now we do talk a lot. I am getting work done, because now I don't wander over to his desk part way through the day, but I did notice that when he left early on Friday I was able to zone everyone out and get a bunch of work done.

I have today, Monday, off from work, so I spent almost all of Saturday and Sunday in the city seeing the sights. Saturday morning, I headed over to the Art Institute of Chicago, where I got in for free because apparently the Abbott foundation donates a bunch of money. Yay for me! I enjoy walking along the water to get places because it was incredibly nice out. The Lion to the left is one of two that flanks the entrance on Michigan Avenue to the Art Institute.

Some pieces inside the institute are "American Gothic", "Nighthawk", and a lot of Georgia O'Keefe's work. I tried to find the Matisse works, because I really find them interesting, but navigating the Art Institute is crazy because you can only get from exhibit to exhibit is to go down to the first floor and go back to the floor you want at the exhibit you want. I was also meeting up with friends to go to Taste of Chicago, but since it's free, I am going to go back another day.

On that note, Taste was delicious!! There was so much food and it was so amazing. I met with a few friends and we all bought a roll of tickets and then shared everything we bought. It lead us eat a turkey leg, chocolate dipped cheesecake, beignets, Irish eggrolls, honey dipped catfish, and a lot of delicious fruit. Yeah, there was a bunch of people there, but it just added to it all, and made it a bunch of fun.

On Sunday, my friends and I went to Sears Tower, which is now actually called "Willis Tower" because some London group bought the tower and the right to it. However, apparently all Chicagoans refuse to call it anything else than Sears Tower. As always, the views were amazing. One of the newest things that they added in the last year or so is the glass walkouts, of which there are four on the Skywalk. Ok, so these walkouts are extended about five feet out into THIN AIR! The whole time, my engineering mind was saying "It's ok, there's a bunch of engineering and calculations and simulation testing that went into this and so no one is going to die", and my irrational mind was going "Holy Crap get me out of here!" Needless to say, I went out, got my picture, and then left as soon as I could.

After the Sears Tower, my friends and I ate at Giordano's, which is one of the famous places in Chicago for deep-dish pizza. It's not THE place for it, but those places also have hour long waits. I ate at Giordano's last week with my boss and my manufacturing group. We have some deep dish pizza, and it was so delicious! I love the food in this city.

Afterwards, we navigated the El and buses so that we could go to the Museum of Science and Industry. Again, it's free because the Abbot Foundation donates a bunch of money.

One of the coolest features of the MSI is that they have the only captured German U-boat from WWII. While it costs more to go on a tour of the U-boat, you can go through the entire exhibit for free, and since I only had about an hour, that's what I did. It was incredibly interesting, and since I love WWII history, it was amazing to me.

After MSI, my friends and I wandered around for about an hour trying to find somewhere we could watch the fireworks. Eventually, we decided just to give up because there were hundreds of thousands of people there, and everyone wanted to get on Navy Pier. Yeah, that doesn't sound like my kind of fun. We ended up taking the El back to Des Plaines, and along the way saw about ten different fireworks shows, so I guess we didn't miss it after all.

This week is going to be a busy one, again. I have two projects to finish, and I'm trying to cram four days of work essentially into three. If I work extra the rest of the days, I can go into work for only a few hours on Friday (I have meetings in the morning) and then leave so I can hang out with my parents and little sister who are coming to visit. More family fun time!

Lesley