Too Weird NOT To Share

Kraak & Smaak

Heard this song on the new Rhapsody commercial where the woman dives into different bubbles and hears music...could not get it out of my head.

It's called Squeeze Me by Kraak & Smaak. Cool video too.

Target Rocks My World

Target is awesome.

To celebrate it's awesomeness, here is a list of the types of things I bought last night. What I like about it is that all of these items came from one place!

body wash
frozen food
gum
clothes
magazine

I considered getting some wine but I might do that next time. Yessss!

American Boy

Beautiful

Magnetic Ink, Process video from flight404 on Vimeo.

A Little Run Down

After a week of non-stop excitement, my body has decided to slow me down.

I have a bit of congestion and a runny nose, my voice is a little rough. Only thing is, I'm quite enjoying that it's making me slow down. I'm spending some much needed time in my apartment doing odds and ends/goofing off.

There's this new app on FB called Animoto. It lets you put a string of your pics together with a song (they offer some song selections or you can select from your own music) and then plays a short video with animation that Animoto provides. It's just a 30 second snippet of fun. I put one together with just a few pics of close friends. <3

Other than that, I've been spending way too much time on FB, did some reading, watched some TV, and I'm doing some laundry. Now I would like this little sneezy, coughy thing to go away by tomorrow but I'm feeling a lot better. With the conference and needing to be at the in-homes by 7am the day I got back from the conference, you can say that I was a bit sleep-deprived. Pack onto that the stress of having to deal with my air conditioning and you can probably see why I'm feeling a little under the weather.

But I'm just gonna take this time to catch up on some things. Thinking about friends has been a nice theme for the day. :) Now if I could just get everything done without putting in too much effort. Haha!

Mamma Mia + Confetti

Had a great movie experience with some work gals on Friday - we went to see Mamma Mia!

The movie is just fun, rocking the ABBA songs, and it was nice to have a little outing. Then we got a great big surprise right as the movie ended. I'm not giving anything away here - there's a singing and dancing sequence at the end as the credits are rolling. Right as that started, some people at the front of the theater started to blow confetti up into the audience. I mean, it was a big surprise, was really loud, and was just ridiculous with all this confetti blowing up into the audience!

The confetti was in the movie too, which at this point we couldn't even hear. I think the confetti was getting shot into the audience for a good minute straight. Finally everyone, up to the top row, had confetti falling on them and everyone was up and out of their seats playing with it. Laughing, looking around, trying to figure out what was happening.

Finally the sound and spray was over and everyone kind of starts to leave but then Meryl Streep pops up again and says, "You want another one?!!" Then they launch into another song and it was great. :D

Alright, now for the nerdy advertising part of me - while it was happening I was thinking, "huh, I wonder who thought of this stunt! And what company sends people out to do this? This is something to look into!!" Total nerd, I know, but it was a fun experience.

But I don't know how they cleaned up all that confetti - it was everywhere! We even saw it trailing into the rest of the mall as it got caught on people's shoes.

I did a quick search and noticed that a few other people blogged about it so it's causing a bit of a stir. I have to say, it was a pretty good stunt.

A Spree

I had a great weekend in Austin.

The main reason I was going to Austin was to shop - I was badly in need of some new clothes. For some reason, my shopping trips in Dallas haven't been that successful so I wanted to go to some old faithfuls. I of course spent lots of time with family but between some eating out and Wii playing, I went to my favorite clothes shopping spots hoping for some good fortune.

And boy did I hit the jackpot. I don't often use the word "spree" when I talk about shopping but it was one...in fact, it was a shopping bonanza!! How about that?!

I'm so excited about my new clothes and just in time for my trip to Miami next week. I'm going to the Account Planning Conference next Monday through Wednesday. I'm thinking about setting up a separate blog just for that, but I'll probably import my posts to this blog because it will be three days of Planning intensity!! There should be some great learning and I'm looking forward to hearing different viewpoints on Planning.

Not only do I get to go to the conference, but I'm meeting up with several friends there. About five of us from my grad program will be converging in Miami so it will be a mini-reunion. I can't wait to share work experiences and catch up.

Overall, I'm coming off of this weekend with a glow. I had a great time, never enough, and it was a good feeling to just do things on my own time and spend the weekend with the people I love.

Hotness Revisited

This is the newest video of Maroon 5 with Rihanna...



But let's also take a look at Maroon 5's first hit...



Why is Adam Levine so very hot??

You Will Love This Video

Some Pretty Cool Things

Alright, it was unfortunate that another bad thing happened at my apartment because this weekend was pretty cool.

If you've been following this blog at all, you'll know that I have had quite a few problems with my apartment and I will be happy to move out soon. Unfortunately, bad stuff has continued to happen the entire time I've been here but I just stopped writing about it. The reason that today seemed so sucky was because I actually spent some time trying to fix up this dump and then it turned on me again. But I'm going to try to focus on what good I did - a lot of organizing, a thorough dusting, and tomorrow vacuuming if everything goes to plan.

So on to this weekend. It has probably been one of the funnest weekends I have had in Dallas.

On Thursday night in Addison (a day before the 4th) they had Kaboom Town. Kind of like Taste of Addison but focusing on the fireworks. I had texted a bunch of people and talked to a few peeps at work earlier in the day to see if anyone wanted to go. No takers. I have a friend that lives in Addison Circle and she mentioned something about meeting up there, but I wasn't relying on being able to see her. Now came a decision I have to make quite a lot these days - do I stay in because I have no one to go do fun things with or do I go try to make my own fun? Most of the time I opt to stay in because I find that I have a lot more fun when I'm out with others. This time, I decided I was going out.

Now I've written about eating out at a restaurant by yourself which I've never really warmed up to. That's something I still need to work on, but I think that Thursday night was a baby step in that direction. I fought the traffic, was surprised when I actually got a parking spot, made my way into the crowd and found a place to sit on the grass between families on their spread-out blankets. I got a spot near the speakers so I could hear the music. At this point I didn't know if I really had any concrete plans for the 4th, and I always like to see fireworks, so I just sat and enjoyed the fireworks to the patriotic music. I have to say, Addison puts on a good show.

After the fireworks they had an outdoor screening of Rudy. I really love the idea of seeing a movie out under the stars so I stayed to watch. I had actually never seen Rudy before so it was fun to just sit out. It was a pretty nice night and eventually I even laid back, propped my head up on my purse, and nearly fell asleep out there. One of the scenes in the movie involves a bunch of football players starting a slow clap for Rudy. Everyone in the audience played right along and started the slow clap - it was cheesy but really fun (I love cheesy things) and I just had to smile and laugh. You just have to be laid back when you're outside watching a movie.

Sure, friends would have made that even more fun but I didn't want to stay home. I was rewarded for being independent and had a really great time.

On to the 4th of July. Just a really casual gathering of friends and watching the Lewisville fireworks. It was nice to not have to make a big fuss - I wasn't cooking, I didn't have to travel too far, I didn't have to fight traffic, and I just got to enjoy good company. I especially didn't want to travel to Austin this weekend because of all the holiday traffic so I'm glad I went to a celebration that didn't involve all the hoopla.

Finally, tonight. Went out with a group of friends to see a band in a small country bar. We know the drummer, and it's always fun to know someone in the band. I love to just be silly and dance, I'm not very self-conscious about it, so it was really fun for me. I don't have too many friends who like to go out dancing here and I don't often get invited, so it was a real treat for me to go dancing. When I'm in Austin, I really like to go to a bar where everyone dances and no one has to feel embarrassed about it. When everyone's moving to the music, I bust out a few of my extra moves. Now most of the time when I dance, not a lot of people are dancing so everyone feels a little more exposed. I turn the dancing down a few notches so I don't embarrass my friends. :p I just like to be crazy and free when I'm dancing...I would say it's probably my favorite thing to do.

So it's late but I just wanted to go ahead and get this down on the old blog. I meant to blog about it today but then the printer mishap occurred. I didn't want to wait until tomorrow to get it down because I'll just be doing stuff around the apartment and we all know how I feel about that! Haha. Just trying to pull through and get to the point where I get to move out of this place.

All in all, though, I had a really good time and I just really wanted to record that. I seem to have fewer and fewer things that are really making me happy these days...the last year has been rough. But I believe that's a whole other post reflecting back on my first year out in the real world.

To be continued...

Literally Dancing 'Til Your Shoes Melt

I love a man that can dance...but I would be dancing with him. ;)

Chemistry Is Awesome

No More Rock Of <3

I had a posting on the show Rock of L___ (I'm not even gonna type it here because I don't want it to be searched) and I had everyone under the sun looking at that one post. Since the rest of my blog really doesn't have anything to do with that, I wanted to just delete that post. :(

Oh well, the posting was about last season's winner (Jes) who is now long gone and so it really doesn't matter. I just didn't like having my whole visitor list being for that one thing.

So did you catch the finale last night? I was so glad that Bret didn't pick airhead Daisy. ;)

Posts Due

I had so much stuff a while back that I wanted to blog about and never got around to it. There were a few fun things that happened over the course of several weeks, and I mainly just want to show pictures.

Canada trip! I went to Canada to work on one of our brands - how cool is that?? I had just a smidgen of time to do a little sight seeing and snap a few pictures. This is the CN Tower. As the Canadians would say - tall, eh? Hehehe.

Here's a little Canadian fun money.

And everything is in both English and French.

So that was pretty cool. I look forward to other destinations I will get to visit as part of my job. :)

Soon after I went to see one of the Cirque du Soleil shows - Saltimbanco. Very cool! If you have not seen a Cirque du Soleil show, and I'm sure you've heard a lot about them, I definitely recommend checking it out. It is absolutely amazing what they can do with their bodies. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to take pictures at the show, but here are some good ones.

The next weekend I went to a huge family reunion with about 50 family members. We used to get together all the time when I was younger but we hadn't had a reunion for 7 years - the last time we had a reunion I was a senior in high school!! I have since graduated from high school, college, and grad school! Oh, and I started a new job, moved to a new city - ya know, nothing too big. :p It was great to see the fam and it was a bit of a reassurance to me that there are lots of nice people just like me out there. Haha.

We have an awesome family photo but I don't have it yet...hopefully I'll remember to post it when someone sends it to me.

I'm pretty sure that's all the fun little odds and ends I had going on. Hooray, all caught up.

Lupe Fiasco - "Superstar"

My Tail Was Wagging

Friday was a great day!

At work, I was pretty busy all day and then ended the day with a few one-on-ones to gain insight on a few concepts. I was excited about it because I was doing it all on my own so decided on things like how to approach capturing ideas and what activities to do to get people involved. It made the rest of the afternoon fly by so I could move on to my evening activities...

Went to see two awesome bands at the Granada tonight - Mount Righteous and Oso Closo. I felt kinda special because I knew someone in both bands. My coworker plays the xylophone and sings in Mount Righteous and a guy I went to high school with plays the guitar in Oso Closo.

Both bands are really awesome. Check them out:

http://www.myspace.com/osocloso - The singer has a wonderful voice and my friend's guitar playing definitely does melt your face off.

And this band just has so much fun performing - it's truly an experience.



Hung out with a few coworkers after the concert and just had a really fun time. Looking forward to more in the future. :)

I Still Do Act Like A Kid

I was kinda bummed this evening because I had to drive in some snowy conditions. I have no experience in it and I just don't like seeing cars using roads as Slip 'n Slides on the news. I just wanted to get home safely and bundle up.

I needed to do a few things around the apartment and soon it was getting late. I was talking to my mom on the phone and just glanced outside. I was actually pretty surprised to see a layer of white snow on everything - I mean, I drove home in some pretty heavy sleet/snow but I guess I didn't expect for it to accumulate on the ground. Cool!

Then I started to feel kinda bad that I didn't want to go play in it...cuz I'm cold and tired. Always, always, always I will go out and play in the snow because we just don't get it that often. But I was thinking about work and getting to bed and all that jazz...

I hopped downstairs for just a moment and decided to open my front door to look out into the winter wonderland. It took seeing just a few big snowflakes for me to whip around, race up the stairs, throw on my gloves and tennis shoes, grab my camera, and go back out to witness the snow.

It really was snowing out there y'all - I'm used to some ice build-up and that's about it. This was big fluffy snowflakes and it put a huge smile on my face. I'm still a kid and I like it that way. ;)

Pure GOLD!

Domenico is back!

If you saw anything about "A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila" then you'll know what I'm talking about...this guy is hilarious! And now with his own show "That's Amore" I'm sure it will be a bunch of dramatic crap, but he's such a baffling and sweet Italian that I'm sure I'll want to catch a few episodes. Yes, it's dumb...

Haha! ;)

Cube World

My friend Katie has this fun new blog - Katie^3 over there on the side bar.

I just think it's fun and funny that office stuff is so new to us that we're actually pretty excited about it!

She talks about decorating her cube, where to find funky supplies, what to do if you're having a slow day, and how to deal with various office issues...these things just never came up in school. There's no Decorating Your Cube 101, not that I think there should be.

I really enjoy the fact that starting work doesn't mean the fun has to end. I'm afraid that that is how it's portrayed - the real world is no fun. Sure, it has its ups and downs but that's no reason to throw your personality out the door. Why can't you infuse your "real world" life with all the fun you've always had?

I think it's just a new phase - decorating your "grown-up" apartment, figuring out office politics, and navigating new destinations. It's a challenge, it's the next step after school, and most profoundly it's a signal that you have met a goal.

I started to think about all of the time I put into school and what was that for? It's for what I'm doing right now - my job. And what is my goal for the future? Building my career.

But I also like that in the real world you can focus a bit more on your life. Living your "normal" life takes up more of your time because you're not going home to do homework during the week...you can do whatever you like!

It's all about learning and growing and all that jazz...I really like it. :)