Typical Day in Atlanta

I am in Atlanta for an internal company seminar on Actuarial Mathematics. About forty coworkers of mine are here - staying in the same hotel, eating out, galavanting about town and whatnot. I want to go home. I'm tired of eating out and sleeping in this giant bed. I'm really sick of studying. This seminar is intense. We're here for 8 days. We are in class for 8 hours each day. And then some people study at night too! While others spend their evenings checking out the bars, going to the gym, enjoying the hotel's complimentary happy hour, and blogging.

I feel like I've been here for a long time, but it's only been a few days. And my days aren't too jam-packed either. Here is a typical day in Atlanta:

6:00 - The alarm goes off.
6:01 - I fumble with the hotel clock.
6:30 - Turn on shower.
6:35 - The water finally is hot and I shower.
7:00 - Complimentary breakfast, usually with a coworker whose name I can't remember.
7:20 - The first shuttle leaves for the office.
8:00 - Class begins.
8:00-12:00 - Lecture, interupted by hung-over coworkers stumbling into the room throughout the morning.
Noon - Lunch, traditionally something very heavy and Southern.
12:37 - Back to lecture (The class was split between evenly between 30- or 45-minute lunches, so we settled on the average. We're actuaries.)
4:37 - Class ends and we are set free. The shuttle takes us back to the hotel, but I always walk.

After class I sometimes run at the gym, but one day some friends and I stayed at the office to study more. It was grueling. Actually it was extremely helpful to work alongside peers.

5:30-7:30 - Complimentary happy hour.
7:00 - Meet in the lobby to go for dinner. Organize the shuttle. This is extremely difficult as we still don't know most people's names. We also don't know who wants to go to eat with us, and there are some whom I don't want to eat with. Also, there are 40 of us, how do we politely keep our numbers down. Especially because my group is clearly the cool clique. (Yeah, I may have the gold medal but it's still the special olympics.) We're actuaries, remember.
9:00 - Back at the hotel to study or out to drink.


Newsflash, kiddos: We found a bar with Trivia Night on Wednesday. We're going to dominate. And I'm not the one who found it. Luic, the bitter Parisian suggested we go after he read an advertisement above a urinal. And Thomas, the South Carolinian Libertarian, who is a cross between Tom and JohnnyBombay fully endorsed it. Thomas also speaks with a French accent, but that's just to make fun of Luic. They should be good for clever team names. On a sidenote, Thomas did not see the advertisement because he used the ladies' room. We were at an Irish Pub and we couldn't figure out which restroom was which. However, when I walked into the wrong bathroom, I noticed that there were no urinals and turned right around.