Let the adventure begin!

Today is going to be a long day.

We knew that going into it and we have been telling ourselves all week to prepare for it.

That was easier said than done however :-)

We didn't get extra sleep before we got here.  We didn't relax or go to bed early on Tuesday knowing that we wouldn't be sleeping tonight.

The day started at 6:30.  Up and at 'em to shower and have breakfast before our welcome address begins at 9:00.

What are the chances?!  ACE (Allscripts) and ACE (Hardware)

Mayor of Chicago addressing the group

I presented on HMP today.  I was asked to speak at ACE after my presentation at CRUG conference earlier this year.  I was happy to hear that our presentation was going to be on Wednesday, I was happy to get it out of the way.  We had a really good turnout and I think overall the presentation went well.  All of the business cards I laid out were gone and I had a few people waiting to talk to me afterwards so I would say that it was a success.  Looking forward to all of the interested users reaching out via email.....we all know I don't get enough of those :-)

We left the conference a few hours early today to start our adventure....you didn't think 'a day at a conference' was going to be it, did you?!

We rented a car from the Budget rental place across the street from our hotel.  A few minutes later we had keys in hand and we were off to Springfield.  All of the research we did showed it would be about a 3.5- 4 hour drive from Chicago to Springfield.

We were heading to the Illinois State Fair!

Why?

Well, that's an easy one- to see Andy Grammer in concert, obviously.

We were loaded up with snacks and a playlist that would make any teeny-bopper proud.

We arrived to the fair around 6:15ish.  The concert started at 7:30 so we were able to kill sometime by walking around and taking it all in.  Funny to see how another state 'does the fair'. 

What a bunch of rookies!

7:30 pm = SHOWTIME

Andy Grammer followed by Matt Kearney followed by Train

The show was great!  All three of them.

When we were let out around 11:30 pm we were riding on adreneline. 

First stop would be McDonald's- the fair food was not good so we needed to finally eat dinner.

We pulled in around 3:30 am.

When we checked the car out I had asked the rental lady if we could park the car somewhere until morning so we wouldn't have to pay $50 to park the car for 5 hours at the hotel.

She didn't have a lot space available so instead just gave us the code to the door so we could let ourselves in the employee entrance to lift the garage door and return the car.

She showed us where to leave the keys and wished us luck!

I guess three white girls from Minnesota don't look too threatning.

I haven't laughed this hard in years.  THANKS LADIES for a GREAT night! 

 I needed that more than I knew.