It all started with squarely handling my Physics 215 lab final. I am officially free from that class and I am so pleased!!! It was my "piss off" class of the semester. Do you ever have those? Where, no matter what good mood you might be in for the day, you go to that class, and BOOM, the teacher, the busy work, and the fiddle fuckin' around, that should be helping you learn the material, "difficult-izes" it instead, and just pisses you off because you know you could be getting so much more work done instead?!?! Yeah, that was Phy215 for me. Yeck.
Badda bing, badda boom, I got 'er done, and hopped on the 21 bus by 4 PM, to get to my apartment, to fix my hair and make-up, to run back on to the sidewalk and make it to the 30 bus stop jusssst in time. The bus was stopped at a red light, and was on its way to the stop I just rushed to. Minimal minutes out in the frigid temperatures, jackpot. :)
I rode the bus downtown, got off without a hitch at the right stop that I needed (the 30 bus route actually scares me and gets me lost...it takes all these twists and turns and one ways through downtown Milwaukee and I can never see where I am going. I've gotten stranded with this route before!). I got off the bus at 4:52 PM, just yards away from the Louise's Trattoria restaurant I had to be at for 5 PM. (I had to meet with this WTS organization -- Women in Transportation Services -- to be awarded a scholarship I just won from them!!)
Perfect timing!
I had to walk past Cathedral Square, in order to get to the restaurant, and it was breathtaking! They had a huge (at least for a city-sized proportion) Christmas lights display that would just leave you breathless.
So, I pulled out my camera with my few minutes to spare, to try to capture the peacefulness of this place:
As I was standing there taking pictures, I heard a woman behind me stirring. She asked me if I had change for a dollar. Normally, I'd just gush it off and say, "No, sorry!" even to honest-looking people, because you can't really trust anyone. I could pull out my wallet to naively trade money stockage with them, when BOOM, they jump me and take my entire wallet. So anyway, I usually just go with a flat answer of "no," and walk off.
This time around, something just told me to go with it and make change for her. She had a single dollar bill, but needed it in coins, to put into the parking meter. I fished and fished and fished in the coin compartment of my purse, and managed to pop out four quarters for her. She gave me her dollar, and I tucked my stuff all away, to turn back around and look at dee pretty lights. :)
Then, it hit me: Woman...parking her car...across the street from the restaurant I'm about to go into...would I be having dinner with her??
Sure enough, I finished taking the pictures, waltzed across the street and into the restaurant, and over to a table of women that I only guessed were the group I was supposed to meet. I introduced myself, and it turns out I was right with my guess.
It also turns out that I was right in that the woman who I just helped out at the parking meter, was the same woman who helped choose me as the scholarship winner!!! HOA! Of all the times to go off of a gut instinct and be generous, I sure made a good impression then!!
The dinner turned out fabulously. Seriously, things could not have gone better. I mean, sure, I tried calamari (aka: squid) without knowing it, and ate a salad that was so fancy I was damned sure I ate real live a flower petal somewhere in there. All of the women were so personable towards me, and we got to talk about all things transportation, which really does spell 'Ashley' allllll over it! Milwaukee County busses, Schneider, Volkswagen...I told them some of the neatest factoids about the Volkswagen Beetle frames (vintage and new models), and had them all at the edge of their seats with my stories. :)
They gave me my check, I graciously accepted it (and by graciously, I got red in the face and thanked them profusely, including a joke about the most I've ever won before was a stick of gum), and then the women held their own meeting. ...
...but I ended up helping run it!! It was crazy, things were just falling into place! The girls were commenting about wanting to do more tours, and how Harley-Davidson is on the rise in the news right now with wanting to build an HD museum here. So, I popped my finger up and explained to them about my contacts at Harley-Davidson, and the "Garage Party" night they held for my SWE girls. I told them all about the 4-station routine, how they served us supper, had it all organized, and could easily fit their organization.
The women just stared open-mouthed at me and then proclaimed things like, "By jove! Let's do that!" "WOW, what a perfect idea for us to recruit and do a fundraiser for!" "Hey, e-mail me Rita Murino's e-mail address soon, okay?" (Rita being my professional-SWE member that hooked us up at Harley.)
And it just kept going...they also expressed how they wanted to do more work at the university level, so I piped up again about how I head up the Society of Women Engineers here at UWM, and as a personal goal of mine, I try to schedule one event a month for my girls. Any one of these WTS women would be *perfect* to have come in and be a guest speaker, to count as one of my events. Two of the women there even had their PE degrees, slick!!
As soon as I mentioned that idea, these women plucked up their purses and whipped out business cards, just flocking to me and offering them to me and set something up as soon as possible.
Whoo hoo, can you say, 'networking'??? :) I am quick on my feet! :)
It is pretty ideal, because the WTS org gets their feel-good kicks of doing volunteer work at the university level, just like they wanted; and SWE gets its kicks as adding yet another event to its story board, to help recruit within the college of engineering. Yesssss.
All in all, we took some pictures (see below), I gracefully bowed out of their meeting, left the restaurant, and flew to a 30 bus stop to get back up to campus, to run across campus, to get across the street, to get to Noodles & Co., to meet more people for a supper meeting. Except this time it was just among friends, so definitely not as formal.
But, I did it all. :) And now, to reward myself, I am sitting here eating a piece of chocolate from the decadent double-decker Hershey's box of chocolates Megan's family gave me as a St. Nick present.
Schwing!! Another successful, powerful day. I'm totally a career woman, it is awesome!
Pictures from tonight's WTS meeting:
Some of the professional women from WTS's board of directors.
Featured, from L to R: Former WI WTS President Jennifer Lacke, myself + my now-noticeably looooong hair, and Scholarship Committee Chair, Tracy.
Note: Both of these pictures, plus an article, are to go in the WTS state-distributed newsletter. :)
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