2014: Off to a Great Start!

I can hardly believe that 2014 is finally here!  

It's probably not a big surprise that the homestretch of 2013 was a little bit rough for me.  I'm not good with uncertainty and, unfortunately, there were a lot of unforeseen professional changes that happened during the holiday season.  

Even though I knew I at the time that losing my job was probably a blessing, I was surprised how much I was overcome by feelings of failure.  It was really difficult to emotionally divorce myself from all the marketing that my former company was doing, especially because they were either abandoning or seriously neglecting so many of the things I worked so hard to build.  

In the end, I stopped following the company social media pages and focused my attention on my future.

I got up the courage to approach my current employer at a holiday party we both attended.  I had interviewed with her team twice over the summer by my media relations skills are weak and they are a marketing and public relations agency that does a lot of pitching to media sources so they had reservations about bringing me on board.  At the party, the agency founder and agency director were both happy to see me and told me they'd been talking about me recently.  I took the opportunity to let them know I was no longer working with my previous company and that I'd appreciate them passing my name along if they heard of anyone looking for my skill set.  To my pleasant surprise, they expressed an interest in hiring me (again) and I offered to freelance for them a bit so that we could all feel out the situation.

The next day, she called me and asked me if I could start immediately.  We hammered out the details and I was in the office the following Monday.  

Surprisingly, I only freelanced for them three days before they made me an offer to come on board permanently.  I think it was partially my personality (I get along with the other team members very well) and partially my writing skills.  They had me drafting a lot of press releases, e-newsletters and social media posts during my freelance tenure and I think they really liked what they saw.  

So I moved right on into a full-time position with them and today I got handed a big Chinese New Year project to manage on behalf of my team.  To say that I'm thrilled would not do my emotions justice.  

I needed to draft two press releases, and my boss came in at 5 to see if I could have them done tomorrow.  I happily informed her I had already given one to the account director for review, and the other would be on his desk before I left the office.  She seemed very impressed and said, "That's wonderful, I am so glad you joined our team!"

"Me too," I told her. 

And things are going well in my personal life too!  I woke up yesterday and thought, "I'm getting married this year."  It was about a year ago that we picked our wedding date, and now we're just about seven and a half months away from the big day.  It's coming up fast.

Carina and I picked out the bridesmaids dresses over the holiday week while Sam and I were up in NorCal.  Jackie and Carina already have their measurements in, and Lindsay is going to head over to the salon tomorrow to get her measurements taken too.  I just need to follow up with Carrie and Michelle to make sure they remember to get their orders in by Sunday.  

I have the date for my bridal shower (in NorCal) set, we have an appointment to do the menu tasting for our wedding entrees, I have a list of bakeries we need to visit to taste wedding cake and talk pricing, and I am feeling really, really good about everything.

I still need to work on the invitation wording just a bit and then order all the invitations.  And I want to sit down with our florist again so I can work out some of the details with the flowers and decorations.  And then it's pretty much all done except picking out the boys' attire and getting our wedding bands made.  Obviously the little details like seating charts etc. are still to come, but those are things that will happen in July and we're still a LONG way off from then.

The other great thing is that I'm totally 100% recommitted to my fitness goals.  I didn't do so well in 2013, but I realize now that putting all my time and energy into my profession isn't the smartest thing to do because jobs come and go but your happiness and health lasts your whole lifetime and affects your lifestyle.  

So, on that high, high note, let me say that 2014 is going to be my best year yet!

Ski Trip Recap

Sam, Hunter and I are back from our week long ski vacation.  Man, what did we come back for?

We drove up Sunday, spent a few hours with Sam's parents for dinner, and then headed to bed early.  I went home to my parents' house with Hunter and he was SO much better than he was when we went home in December.  He slept through the night, didn't scratch at the door every 15 minutes, and didn't keep me up.  THANK YOU, HUNTER!

Monday we all enjoyed a leisurely breakfast and then we headed up to Northstar.  Man was it cold!  But there was NO snow.  

Thankfully, we took it easy on Tuesday and enjoyed several flurries of snow throughout the day and night.  Wednesday we had a pretty substantial dusting of powder for our skiing pleasure.  To our surprise, it snowed again on Wednesday night and the skiing was even better Thursday that it was the day before!

We ate at Tavern 6330 (not impressed) and Manzanita up at the Ritz Carlton (okay, Sam's dish was world's better than mine) but our best meal was probably the ravioli and salad we made on Monday upon our arrival.  

Friday we drove home and stopped in to visit my grandparents.  Papa, the daredevil, fell off a ladder on our anniversary and has been recovering from a fractured skull and some compression fractures on his spine.  How the man is up and walking around escapes me!  Sam came over for dinner that night and Mom made her signature pizzas.  Mmmmm.

Saturday I got to visit the O'Briens and hear all about their wedding planning and advice.  Then I ran some errands for our class reunion ad went shopping with Mom.  Dad hasn't been feeling so great so she and I went to dinner by ourselves that evening which was actually really nice.  Hunter spent most of the day with Dad and Max.  After dinner, we all settled in to watch the finale of Downton Abbey which Mom and Dad missed the weekend before.  Such a fun and relaxing way to cap off the week.

Sunday we drove back to SoCal and restocked the fridge, unpacked and generally got our lives in order.  Tonight Sam is on call and I am trying to prepare for my business trip on Wednesday (overnight to Vegas).  I have an early morning meeting at work, so I prepped our favorite chili and have everything set to go in the crockpot stoneware in the fridge so all I have to do tomorrow morning is pop it into the crockpot base and turn it all on.  Yippee for amazing and delicious meals made easy!

I managed to get the car washed tonight after work in addition to washing a load of laundry and running a load of dishes.  Tomorrow I need to get gas for my car, pick up more coffee beans (whole) from Peet's Coffee and buy some more kitchen trash bags.  My work is never done!