A Long-Awaited Update

Happy Thanksgiving! I know it's been a while - okay, a long while - but I've been a busy girlie! I'll try my best to recap...everything I've done since mid-June. Okay, just the highlights.

Just after I sent the last update my mom and I went on our yearly trip to Florida. As always it was a great time. Unfortunately I don't recall a lot of details or any anecdotes, but I did save my aunt from a hungry gator. Luckily my brave family looking-on managed to capture this action shot:

The concert season at Alpine Valley went well. This year we were graced by Nickelback, Jimmy Buffett, Ozzfest, Rage Against the Machine, and Dave Matthews. Moving up in the world, I stepped into a new position with even more responsibility there this season. It's kind of hard to believe this was my 6th year there! In any event, I was in charge of a dozen or so employees, a significantly increased inventory, an elevated clientele (read: VIP), and I reported to myself...who reported to the GM. ;) The girls were great, and although I'd never worked with any of them before (Jamie left me this year!) they all made each shift seem more like fun than work. Which is the ultimate goal, right?

All of these shows, however, were squeezed in on the weekends between my regular full-time job at Mercury up in Fond du Lac. My co-workers there are pretty amazing as well. I've been there about 6 months already, and I've learned a ton! I still don't know what's going to happen after my co-op come the end of January, but I definitely wouldn't mind staying. Part of me wants to spread my wings and try something blatantly new - Apple? California? - but the other (read: paranoid) part of me doesn't know if I'd really want to move somewhere where I know no one and know nothing about the area and "see how it goes." I guess when it comes to where I'll work in a few months...I'll see how it goes.

I'm sure I said this in a past update (you know, back when I wrote them more regularly), but I graduated from college in May, and we finally got around to having a party in mid-August. I got to celebrate that in addition to my parents' 30th wedding anniversary, which was cool.

September seemed to be the month of weddings. And
break-ups. And birthdays. All in all, it was just a crazy month. Not that that craziness has ended, however. Apparently I've been so busy I haven't even made any notes in my calendar to jog my memory for writing these little updates. Clearly it wasn't anything too important. Hah! I must have just been busy doing nothing.

As if I'm not busy enough, I've started bartending again. I missed meeting all those people, and I also realized how much it sucked having to plan around paydays. Since it'd probably be next to impossible to waltz in somewhere where the bartenders make money and ask for just Fridays and Saturdays and expect to actually make it on the schedule, I opted for a less conventional route: April and I are bartending for private parties and events around Milwaukee.

So far I've done one night; April couldn't make it. It was hands-down the weirdest bartending experience ever. We were told a nine-hour shift and it turned out to be three, a three-hour break, and another three; we never got restocked, so when we were out of something it was just too bad; and the people I worked with weren't all that easy on the eyes, so I'm honestly surprised at their monetary outcome at the end of the shift. Hopefully the next experience (this Saturday) will go better...

I don't want to make this too long, but hopefully I'll be able to set into a schedule so I can get these out more regularly. Good luck to anyone braving the crowds to shop Black Friday!

<3Rebecca~

P.S. Check out Blingo. Seriously, there's no reason not to. It searches through Google, so you get all the same results, but you can win stuff just for using it. I have it as my homepage and on the search field in my browser. Click this link to get started.

6 creative buisness cards

Maybe I should ask "will my business card be as cool as any of these?" when they ask "do you have any questions for us?" at the end of my job interviews... ; )

clipped from picdit.wordpress.com 6 creative buisness cards just like the page layout of your facebook profile dentist’s teeth are indented into the side no trouble making it to the location of this business break-out lock picking kit spoofing a famous logo there’s another step needed to actually read the business info.

Yes, Thank You

Since I haven't updated in a while (and honestly, I hope to soon!) I thought I would share the potent tidbits from this wonderful article I read. The New York Times has the full piece.

clipped from www.nytimes.com Years ago, after I took an ambitious friend to a prominent person’s party, he asked for an address so he could send a note. I cringed, but should not have been surprised. The word etiquette comes from the French for ticket, and Emily Post’s popularity 85 years ago came at a time when a middle class was emerging in this country, and people needed manners tutorials to advance vocationally and socially. Even back then, Ms. Post acknowledged that letter writing was a chore. Today, those who hate writing thank-you notes will be pleased to know that for dinner parties, even sticklers suggest you have to write them only if there was a written invitation. And it has become more acceptable to phone or send an e-mail message of thanks, too, as long as it’s not from a cab two minutes after leaving. The point is to tell a host that the evening has lingered pleasantly in your mind, that it wasn’t taken for granted. “But I don’t think you can ever write too many thank-you notes,”