Business Trip

As of yesterday morning, I was unemployed.  As of this morning, I am going on a business trip to Minnesota this week.  No, this isn't a cute way of saying I'm taking a vacation, I have been hired under contract by my former employer to attend one of their annual trade shows.  

My former company's CEO (I'll call her Cleo) called me yesterday and asked me if I would help her out and fill in for one of the National Sales Managers who was staffing one of 3 booths at her client's annual trade show.  Unfortunately, my former co-worker's husband is in the ICU having heart problems and she cannot attend the show.  Cleo told me that as she was trying to think who she could trust to run a booth, my name was at the top of her head.

Cleo is picking me up at 5:45 tomorrow morning so we can catch our flights out of LAX at 8:30.  We arrive in Minnesota tomorrow afternoon and will be meeting up with the 3rd person (who is flying out of John Wayne on a different airline than Cleo and I).  I'm trying not to read too much into it, but I think it's interesting that Cleo told me she was looking at different carriers for us than for the other person going along, even if we flew out of Orange County instead of LA.  And while I've never had trouble carrying a conversation with Cleo in the office, I am a little bit nervous to spend the better part of 2 full days traveling just she and I.

I understand that no promises have been made, but I'm taking this very seriously- as if it is a multi-day interview.  I know the CEO will be evaluating my performance with the idea that if I do well I might bumped higher on the priority list for positions they need to fill.  So here we go and here's to hoping that something good comes from this!

If nothing else, I will have to figure out a way to put "contract work" on my resume and make it seem as thought I was in business for myself (slow as it might have been) during this period of unemployment in my work history.