Hey and what's up this fine Sunday night? I'm in Chicago and got here on Thursday and we took over a new hotel on Friday and now we've got our work cut out for us. The hotel was a
Crowne Plaza in downtown Chicago but we are making it into an independent hotel which means that we are in the process of setting up an all new reservations systems and a website and getting the word out as best we can. You can check out our new website by clicking
here and the hotel is a 143 room hotel that was built a hundred years ago and restored in 1997 to what it is today. The El train runs right outside my window and goes all night long but it's not too bad as the rooms are pretty sound proof but it still sounds like thunder or something like that but luckily it hasn't really kept me awake at night. The sale went through on Friday which means that I ended up staying the weekend and working off and on and will spend a few more days this week and then I'll head home again mid week. It hasn't been too bad though as there is a bunch of us here so at least I'm not alone and it's been kind of fun ...... at least a change of pace if nothing else.
The weather was actually pretty nice when I got here on Thursday and was probably close to 40' which was about the same as it was in DC when I left but then a storm came through last night and it's still here now - most of it was rain and freezing rain yesterday and then it started to snow pretty heavily this afternoon and think that it is still snowing out now. The hotel is only about a block and a half from the
Millennium Park which is a pretty cool place and four of us decided to go out and play in the snow and do some ice skating at the park which was pretty fun. I can't remember the last time that I went skating but I did
ok and guess that it's like riding a bike and it was coming back to me the more that I practiced. Here's a picture of one of the guys that I took with my phone and it was snowing so hard at times you could barely see -
We then went and had some appetizers and a couple of cocktails after that and then got back here around 7pm and it was still snowing when we got back. I guess that it's one big storm too
cuz I guess that we've all ready got a few inches at home too - and just hope that all is clear by the time that I'm ready to fly back home. My boss is coming tomorrow and we'll probably all do dinner out somewhere tomorrow night and it's been a good trip all in all and I kind of really like this hotel. We also took over the Hilton Garden Chicago Downtown about two weeks ago and that hotel is only a couple of blocks from here so I'm sure that I'll be heading down there to spend some time with them in the next day or two too - we went from no hotels in Chicago to managing two in just a couple of weeks ....... go figure.
Other than that the week last week went pretty quickly and the two inches of ice that was frozen on top of the snow in VA was finally starting to melt when I left and it was pretty clear and dry finally. Who knows what I'll go back to though - but guess that it's nothing like my brother was describing with what they got in Syracuse - four feet of snow a week and a half ago or something like that ....... I can't imagine having to deal with something like that. My brother was pretty funny telling me about his adventure getting back from Atlanta just after the snowstorm - his car was buried and by the time he got it dug out he had locked the keys in the car and left the car in reverse but luckily it was stuck enough where it wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. My nephew ended up coming to his rescue though and they got the car out - but I don't know how the heck his car was able to get through the mess as he has a really low rider foreign sports car that certainly wasn't made for that stuff. But at least he got new snow tires as his Christmas gift and guess that they probably come in pretty handy living in the middle of that stuff.
Other than that not too much is new with me, I think that I'm going to be travelling a little bit more and have another trip planned heading to Palm Springs in a couple of weeks. We are having our National Sales Meeting at one of our hotels out there and I'm kind of looking forward to seeing some warmer weather. But I think that 's about all that is going on with me, kind of looking
forward to getting back home again and sleeping in my own bed again. So, until another day I guess that's all he wrote - let me know what's new with you if you have a chance and try and stay in touch. Talk with you all later!
Another Sunday night and here I am, nothing too new to report and I'm still hanging! We've still got a couple of inches of snow on the ground and another couple of inches of ice on top of that and it's so hard that you can walk right on top of it ....... or slip and slide. We got a mess of stuff last Tuesday night which started out as snow and then turned to freezing rain and it was pretty much done by Wednesday morning. They ended up closing the offices on Wednesday (along with everything else) but I didn't really find out about it before I left the house so I went in to the office any ways. It was a little hairy driving but I made it in almost the same amount of time but the difference was that there was barely no one else on the road.
It didn't seem like they did a very good job clearing the streets and by that afternoon it had gotten cold again and then stayed that way the rest of the week - and that's when the ice and snow turned to this stuff that was harder than concrete. I was finally able to get my driveway all cleared out yesterday - I paid the kid next door to do most of it and then I ended up having to do the pile out by the road. It was a little rough getting in and out the rest of the week but that's all gone now, hopefully to stay. I also washed my car again yesterday and that's all clean now but I've been dodging puddles since then and don't think that it is going to last very long. It's been flurrying here again today but we didn't get much and think that it is gone now any ways. Oh, and I think that it is suppose to be close to 60' by Tuesday so hopefully everything will be gone in another day.
Our offices are also closed again tomorrow in honor of the big President's Day so that is a bonus, I'll probably end up working a little bit but it'll be nice to get to stay home and do it from here. I still need to shave off the bottom of the bathroom door that is sitting up there in the hallway to make it fit again after my tile project so I might end up doing that tomorrow. I'm kind of debating if I should buy a circular saw and do it that way or just buy one of those shaver things and try and do it that way. I don't think that I'll get it even if I try to do it by hand so that's the
delima that I'm having.
Other than that I'm going to head off to Chicago towards the end of the week and hope for warm weather there - we took over one hotel as of 02/01 and expect to take another one on 02/23 so there will be plenty for me to keep busy with. We also hired a person to do both hotels and she started last week so it'll give me some time to work with her as well. I was trying to think of when my last trip was and it's been quite a long time - think it might have been Dallas last September was the last time I've flown ........ so I'm due for a change in scenery.
I guess that's it though and all is well with me, I'm just trying to stay warm and hang in there until Spring finally gets here! I hope that all is well with you too and I'll talk with you again sometime soon.
Here it is another Sunday night and I'm not sure where the weekend went, or last week for all that matter. It was a pretty rough drive to work I think Tuesday morning as we got a few inches of snow overnight and made for a very dirty vehicle. But the rest of the week it was just darn right cold and think that even one or two nights it was down in the single digits. Damn too cold for me any ways.
I did end up getting out and washing the car yesterday, plus got my oil changed and had my tires rotated. I'm gonna have to check the Ford website to see what the actual recommendation is on the whole tire rotating thing as they are telling me that you should do it every 5,000 miles and I've never had it done and have 14k on my car now. But it sure does drive better than it was as it's been pulling to the left slightly for the last six months and seems to drive much straighter now.
And I'm still working for our new hotel in Chicago (
the Hilton Garden Inn Downtown) and have our person starting tomorrow who's going to be working at the hotel so I guess that I will be spending quite a bit of time with her for the next couple of weeks. I also think that I'll be planning a trip over there too but I'm hoping that I pick some dates that are a tad bit warmer than it has been. Windows Vista seems to be working better now for me too although I'm still kind of customizing it but am still working out some of the remaining bugs. I've also still got a lot of things that don't work any more and find new things every day but all in all it's an improvement I think.
I guess that's about it for another week and can't believe that it's going to be Monday morning again in no time - and think that it's going to be a repeat of last week in the weather department. They are calling for some pretty nasty weather for us on Tuesday and guess that it's either going to be snow or freezing rain - either way it's probably going to suck. So I hope you are digging out and staying warm, stay in touch and have a great week!
Hey again and here we are! Not too much going on, it's very chilly out and we've seen snow and guess that we haven't even seen the worst of it yet ...... single digits in these parts tonight I think. And most of my week has been spent with my computer, last weekend I did a clean install with Win
XP getting ready for Vista and then today I spent the day doing a clean install of Vista. I'm mostly back now and it's working better than it was and I was getting way to many errors up until today. I downloaded the program Tuesday morning when I got up before I went to work but it was taking forever to download so I just left it to run. Then I got home that evening and had to play with it and installed it on top of
XP and have been messing with it ever since.
And there are way too many things that don't work any more, I think that there are more programs that don't work with it than do and I'm still trying to install the ones that I can. At least now it seems to be working a lot better, I was having issues with my audio and video card drivers but I think that I fixed that today but there are still a few things that I haven't figured out yet. I'm really going to miss Adobe until I can figure that out - I also had to upgrade to Norton '07 in order to get it to work. I swear that it's all fixed and they just make you buy new software every five years.
Other than that we took over four hotels last week and I am helping out mostly in Chicago - we are hiring a revenue manager that starts next week so I'll be watching them in the meantime. I will probably end up going there at least more than once and might be kind of cool as the hotel looks really nice. Right in the middle of downtown, somewhere near Mag Mile where ever that is. You can read the press release
here. I also think that there are a few other things in the works but at least we are spreading it out a little bit.
And I guess that's about it for another week, it got the salt all washed off the car again today so let's hope that it lasts for a little bit! Have a great week and stay warm where you live and I'll talk with you again on another day. C-ya!
