April 2010

Sunday ended up being running, running all day long. I made it (late) to Michigan for the Senior Luncheon/Tea. It was such a good time though, always a blessing to see my church family. Took my camera, didn’t take pictures…

Monday was productive; got some video stuff done, cleaned the apartment, paid bills, etc… and late into the night (technically Tuesday) I ordered my new MacBook Pro which I am using right now!!

Tuesday started with an early morning video shoot at United Way.

The day continued with a trip to Goodwill, lunch with Kyle and my brother, listening to them talk business and then meeting with Kyle’s old swim coach to talk about the “Dollars for Scholars” program and how we can help with it by adding a social media element.

Wednesday I was basically just excited all day while tracking the shipping progress of my MacBook Pro!

Thursday it arrived! It arrived!! In all it’s beauty it arrived!!!

I also had weird dreams that night including one involving an all-in-one coffee grinder/gelato maker at the restaurant I work at.

Friday I ate three hot dogs. That literally was the news of the day in my life. One of them was at Steak and Shake and had guacamole on it, which was way better than it sounds.

Saturday I slept in and took it easy most of the day. I did venture out to the Brewhouse in North Manchester for lunch, where I was pleasantly surprised to see table tents that I’d designed being used! I designed it while I was in Argentina and had no idea where or even if they were going to be used. They were printed poorly, but it was still exciting to see them.

Didn’t do so great on taking pictures every day this past week, but in my defense it was a busy week! Between working six shifts, having three video shoots and one interview, I was running around all week long.

Sunday was really relaxing and nice, went to River Oaks Church in Goshen and had lunch at Kyle’s parents where I got some quality play time with Dani in!

We had fun! She had a little trouble remembering my name and called me “Tom” a few times

Monday I stopped over to the school to pick up the video camera and had a nice visit with my advisor. I also got a little more info on the mysterious meeting I was having on Wednesday. 

Tuesday was my day off (and Tuesday is also Kyle’s day off), so he accompanied me to Anderson, IN for a video shoot. We tested out the DIY studio lights we’d gotten the week before and then hit the road. Had a nice picnic lunch on Taylor University’s campus in Upland, IN and then made it the rest of the way to Anderson where we interviewed the sweetest couple! 93 and 95, married 67 years (and dated 6 years), and still as feisty as ever! This video shoot was in relation to the KREMC video I’m doing. The gentleman had been involved with the rural electrification process in the very beginning, one of his summer jobs as a young man was going to the farmers and getting easements signed. We talked quite a bit about that whole process but of course also had to hear their love story. Such a sweet couple. 

After the interview we headed back to Upland for dinner and ice-cream at Ivanhoes and a visit to my Aunt Rita and Uncle Mike. My Uncle Mike has really taken off with pottery (he sells online on his Etsy page) so we toured his studio and I visited my kiln! 

Wednesday I had an interview at Grace College for a potential position (6 months, full-time) with the brand campaign agency they hired at the end of last year. The interview was hard, but the job sounds like a really exciting opportunity. I’m really hoping I am asked to do a second interview, especially since I remembered so many things after the fact that I should have talked about! 

I also had a video shoot at United Way in the afternoon. We’re just beginning to work on the 2010 campaign video. While I was there I found out that the 2009 campaign video I did for them won second place in the state!

Thursday and Friday were both spent getting stuff done at home during the day and working at night. Friday I responded with a YES! to be part of a branding team for my parent’s mission organization. It will be an ad hoc committee that will video-conference once a month and and then make recommendations to the mission. Here’s some pictures of my two main work stations, my coffee table and my desk, both in their messy natural state! 

Saturday I started out the day bright and early at the KREMC Annual Meeting shooting video. It was huge event, they do lots of giveaways and have kids programs because they need to get at least 2% of their 17,000 customers to have a quorum for the voting. I got to add to my name tag collection

Grandma asked me to take some pictures of the dogwood tree out front so she could show grandpa, it is absolutely beautiful this year, and I noticed today that the lilacs (my favorite!) are starting to bloom!

Lastly, graduation is coming up in a few weeks! I really wanted to have a time to see people in Michigan (high school friends, my friends parents, former co-workers, etc…) so I decided to have an open house. Thankfully I can have it at my old house since the associate pastor at my home church lives there! So I made postcard invitations and sent those out and then made a Facebook event using this classy picture

Thanks for stopping by!

Posting a day late due to a very busy weekend. Before we get to that though, let’s go back a week to Easter Sunday!

Sunday – Jon, Natalie and I all went to church at River Oaks in Goshen and then had lunch at Kyle’s parent’s house. They have a beautiful backyard so we all went for a cruise in the golf-cart and took some pictures down by the river. Notice their dog Brewster, he made sure he was in every single picture

Monday – Happy Dyngus Day!! I don’t completely understand it, but from what I get it’s the day after Easter, it’s a very Polish thing (food/music) and it kicks off campaign season. Despite not really knowing exactly what it was, I enjoyed it! Polish sausage, perogies and this amazing cabbage/noodle mix that was sweet and sour and oh-so-delicious!

Tuesday – I scheduled my first video shoot for the KREMC video I’m doing! So I ran around town before work and picked up some stuff to do DIY studio lighting since the shoot is an interview in a home. I got 2 lights, some umbrellas and a white board. I’m picking up the camera today and I’m going to test it to see if I need more or something different. So far I have 4 video shoots (for 2 different videos) set up in the next 2 weeks!

Wednesday – I watched something Tuesday night after work that had chocolate chip pancakes in it, so first thing Wednesday morning I was craving them (which is super weird because I don’t normally like sweet food or breakfast all that much). I gave into the craving though and made some for breakfast… and then didn’t want to waste the batter so made more for lunch… and then did the same routine the next day…

Thursday – In between prepping my paper/presentation for the conference I went through all my clothes. That involved one closet, 2 dressers, 3 under the bed bins, one giant rubbermaid and 2 trash-bags full of clothes (Goodwill junkie?!). I sorted through and packed away winter stuff, unpacked summer stuff, and went through everything picking out pieces that don’t fit or that I don’t see myself wearing. From there I sorted out one trash bag to go to Goodwill and one giant overflowing box that I’m either going to try to take to Plato’s Closet, or maybe have a clothing swap with the girls at work!

Friday – besides prepping for the conference all day, stressing about what to wear, posting about what to wear, going into Cerulean for a delicious snack half because I really wanted the special that my boss had tweeted about, and half because I needed my co-workers opinion on what to wear to the conference, I also went to dinner at don Quijote in Valparaiso! The food was good, but definitely didn’t taste all that legit to me. I’m not sure how much difference there is from chorizo in Spain vs. chorizo in Argentina, but according to this restaurant chorizo in Spain is more like thick cut pepperoni. Also, the sauce on the patatas bravas was like hot wing sauce. It was all still quite tasty though.

Saturday – the big day! I presented at the 2010 Clement S. Stacy Undergraduate Research Conference held on the Purdue University Calumet campus. The pictures are: me a few minutes before the presentation feeling a little nervous, a posed picture of me after the presentation when I’m all relaxed and relieved, all four of the presenters in my session during the Q&A time, and my publicist/driver/photographer Kyle doing his mock presentation I’ll blog more about the conference later this week. The rest of Saturday was busy busy busy! We went to the outlet malls in Michigan City, the mall in South Bend and had dinner with Jon/Nat and two of Kyle’s friends in Elkhart.

I guess that’s it, I will be posting more this week though! I’ve got 3 outfits to from the weekend to post, a paper to post about, a conference to post about… and I have a big week ahead of me: working 6 shifts, 3 video shoots (one of which is in Anderson – 2 hours away), one interview, and hopefully just getting a lot done in general!

I lost my camera. So I didn’t take any pictures until Thursday. Then I found my camera and still didn’t use it to take pictures, just kept using my phone to take pictures. I think I need to set an alarm on my phone to go off every day to remind me to take a picture.

The big photo event of the week was the amazing beer/pub-style food dinner at Cerulean.

A few notes about that night. My shoes were amazing first of all. Second of all, the food was crazy good. Fish and chips (Cerulean style, skate fish and okinawa “purple” potatoes with a mascaropone sour cream dip), roasted chicken and mac & cheese (chicken roasted with honey and saffron to complement the beer pairing, mac & cheese made with gruyere, each person got half a chicken, 2 POUNDS!), burgers (one was pork and beef with a fried egg and brie, one was kobe beef with oats, cherry and a homemade ketchup) and dessert was a chocolate banana cake and a raspberry/pineapple puree. I twittered the entire night and found out that the kitchen followed my tweets throughout the night, as well as 3 co-workers who weren’t working that night! It was such a fun night!

This is the swimsuit I ordered online (through modcloth.com) and got in the mail this week! It’s super modest and yet insanely adorable! I think I need retro sunglasses, wedges and an adorable sunhat to go with it! I ordered the retro high-waisted 2 piece also to see which one I would like more and ultimately I picked the one piece. While both were cute and flattering, I’m more comfortable in the one piece.

Apparently my dog-nephew Leo likes wearing the scarf I got Natalie for her birthday. I think he looks quite dapper

This is what my room usually looks like A mess created by me trying to figure out what to wear.

I came home today and this lamp was on. I never even use this lamp. So, I wondered, and even tweeted that perhaps it was the act of an intruder, or maybe the lamp is possessed. Then when I left for work and turned the kitchen light off (which I had flipped on when I walked in the door earlier) the lamp turned off. Apparently the switch is connected to that outlet, and I am both an intruder in my own house, and the evil mastermind behind my possessed lamp.