Day in the Life

I always have a hard time explaining what I do for work to people. “Consultant” doesn’t make much sense. So, here’s what I did yesterday:

--CENTRAL TIME--
5:40 am: Alarm goes off, shower, blow dry hair (using a kitchen plug- we have no plugs in the bathroom and I don’t want to wake Andrew up by drying my hair in the bedroom), change, do one more last minute check that I have everything
6:30 am: Cab picks me up to go to airport. I get a cab driver I’ve had before- he’s always very talkative and energetic for this early.
7:15 am: Board flight. I usually get upgraded to first class. At this point I’m starving and so glad they give us O.J. when we board
7:35 am: Plane takes off: naptime/breakfast/read book/iPod time. I won’t work on the plane. If I have to fly, I’m going to use it for enjoyable activities only. After all, people who drive to work every day get to listen to the radio.

--PACIFIC TIME--
8:50 am: Flight lands, I head to the Avis bus, get my car for the week- a Chevy Trailblazer
9:30 am: Arrive at client site. I have 30 minutes to catch up on my email before the 10 am meeting.
10am: Meet with client to review the open questions from the last two weeks of testing the system we’ve built for them. They want to make several changes. We want to make sure we understand them exactly so we only have to make one more set of changes. For instance, they want to calculate interest revenue based on the days of the month, not by taking the 1/12 of the annual rate each month.
12:40 pm: We break for lunch- Wahoo’s Fish Tacos. I’m so glad they serve brown rice now!
1:30 pm: Update our system change log from the morning meeting. Review it with other team members to make sure we’ve got everything listed
3:30 pm: Send out copy of changes to the entire team for review
4:00 pm: Reconvene with client to discuss list and make sure we have a complete list. More changes come up.
5:30 pm: Meeting with client ends. Meet with programmer to discuss how long it would take to reprogram and retest all the changes
7:00 pm: Send updated list with effort included, to everyone on team.
7:05 pm: Answer questions from the person writing reports out of the new system
7:40 pm: Leave work, check into hotel, call Andrew, unpack for the week.
8:30 pm: Eat room service dinner (small pizza with veggies)
9:30 pm: Fall asleep watching a Lost episode Andrew put on my iPod. I’ve made sure to put out my running clothes right next to the bed so that I have no excuse the next morning.