Archive for June, 2008
Pay It Forward Time, People!
Jun 30th
Yay! It’s time for my first official blog contest. And you don’t even need to be the 8234th caller, or know the capital of some remote country or anything! This is a contest even I could win. Well, theoretically. I mean, obviously I can’t win my own contest, but you know what I mean.
Before we get things started I want to welcome all the new people (even if there are only like 2 of you). Also, I want to let you know right now that we have comment moderation on so that we don’t get spam, so it might take an hour or 2 for them to show up (darn Ryan having control of that and not telling me how to do it – for some reason it won’t let us moderate from the WordPress dashboard thing). Anywho, let’s get on with it!
The contest starts now, and will end at 11:59pm on July 4th because I said so. After it is over I will use a random number generator to pick a commenter, and that person wins a care package from me! All you have to do to enter is comment below. If you want some direction (I always like direction, don’t you?), and because I’m new to this whole blogging in front of strangers thing, you should ask me a question that you would like me to answer. I will try to answer any questions in future posts. It will be fun! I promise! Or you can tell me your 4th of July plans. Whichever. Or just do your own thing. I’m flexible (read: a people-pleasing pushover).
The prize for this awesomely simple contest is yet to be decided. I like Swistle’s “go to Target and pick out things that remind me of the person” method, so I will probably go that route. But who knows. It’ll be a surprise! Oh, and if you win, you must pay it forward – I can hold another contest and choose a winner for you if you don’t have your own blog, or you can post the contest on your blog.
So yah…get to the commenting. I will keep this post at the top all week (hahaha…like I was going to post again anyway!) so that you have time to comment (or think of a great question).
Oh, and to answer my own question, Ryan and I will be heading down toward the cities to celebrate the 4th with his family. Last time we were there they tried to blow everyone up with fireworks*, so it should be good times!
*Acutally it was that a lit firework fell into a box of unlit fireworks and about 1 minute of chaos ensued, with people running for the garage. No one was hurt and so now it is a funny story. As most possibly-very-tragic-but-no-one-got-hurt stories are.
**I forgot to specify 11:59 Central Time on Friday. I’m whatever-centric it is when you assume everyone goes by YOUR local time. I’m also totally impressed at the number of commenters so far! Woo hoo!
Ahhh…so much better. And, something fun!
Jun 27th
I finally got around to looking for a new theme for the blog. And for now, this one is it. I don’t have time to play around with it (duh, I’m at WORK!), but I wanted something that didn’t have so many columns that I didn’t even understand. And this definitely fulfills that role. So yay!
In other exciting news, I’m going to be joining in the awesome Pay It Forward contest craziness being organized by Swistle. I’m very excited, as this is my first attempt at doing something with the blog other than just commenting on other blogs and rambling. Check out her post for an explanation of what this is and how it works. Also, I know I only have like 4 readers and half of you don’t have your own blogs. We’ll figure it out. It’s all good. :-)
Well, that’s all I have to say for now. No big plans for the weekend – we may be heading down to the Reef bar tonight (yay for a bar within walking distance!)…depends on the weather. And tomorrow we have a high school grad party for my cousin in Pine City. That should be fun. I always like visiting family!
Have a great weekend, everyone, and I’ll see you back here on Monday for the contest!
Maybe I take myself too seriously sometimes…
Jun 20th
Do you ever have times where you think that you must not be very good at your job? Maybe a customer yells at you and hangs up on you, and then out of nowhere (as far as you can tell) another customer suddenly decides to go with another agent with no explanation of why they left. And it’s just the latest in a recent string of accounts either leaving or just closing up shop. On the one hand, I know that most of this is not in my control – what I was being yelled at about wasn’t my fault (seriously), and I can’t help someone stay in business if they want to close. But it’s hard not to take it personally when you spend all day working on accounts and you talk to these people on a regular basis.
I know that I’m just a little overemotional right now, and that’s part of it, but I feel like I must not be doing a good enough job if these people aren’t happy. I must be able to do something better. And yet…I don’t know. Sometimes I don’t know that I see myself here permanently…I like my workplace – the people are great, and I like working downtown. But I don’t know if insurance is what I want to do the rest of my life. But then, I don’t know what else I would do. I know, in theory, that I’m young and that I could do pretty much anything. But anything is too broad of a category for me to choose from. I want someone to just sit me down and tell me what I would be good at, what I would like doing, and how to get started doing that. Any takers? ;-)
Edit:
Alyson (my college roommate) was here this weekend. We were talking about how we were both in this boat – not happy with our current work status, but not sure what to do about it. She shared something someone else had said to her, and we thought it summed up our work wishes quite well. “I’m not f***ing cut out for customer service.” Give me a job that I don’t have to talk to customers. In fact, I would prefer a job without a phone at all, but I understand that’s not really realistic. So one only other people I work with or other people in my industry call, please. Thanks.
Jun 19th
Our thoughts go out to the owners of the businesses in the building that had a fire overnight. One of them was Arthur’s Men’s Formal Wear, who supplied the tuxes for all the guys for our wedding. They were fabulous to work with, much less costly than the other shops we checked, and I hear they are moving to a new location soon up in Piedmont, so if you are in need of formal wear in Duluth, definitely check them out! Especially after something like this, they can use the business!
It was wonderful
Jun 17th
I realized this morning when I read Shauna’s comment that not everyone who reads this blog is a family member or friend that we talk to on a regular basis. ;-) And so some of you have no idea what our wedding was like or what our honeymoon plans were. As far as what the wedding was like, I don’t really know how to explain, other than to say it was wonderful and direct you herefor pictures. We gave the guests at our wedding the login info, so they can add photos that they took, which is great since I obviously was not carrying a camera around with me all day. ;-)
All of our vendors were fabulous – the Holiday Inn, the Flower Cart, Julia Cheng and her assistant Kourtney, Deacon Tim, and our DJ, Ryan’s cousin Mike. They were all so great! I couldn’t believe how perfect everything was. Our friend Greta loaned us her Volkswagon Bug convertible (Green!) for a ride after the ceremony, so Ryan and I sat on the top of the back seat while our maid of honor and best man drove us down to Canal Park for some pictures. Two of the big ships came through the canal while we were down there, and so I cannot wait to see the photos that Julia got with the ship and the bridge in the background. It was a beautiful, sunny day also – the nicest one we had so far this summer.
As far as our honeymoon goes, Ryan and I went up the North Shore of Lake Superior to Lutsen Resort. We stayed at the lodge for 3 nights – Monday through Thursday. It was great to go up there and relax. We did a lot of hiking on some of the shorter trails that branch out from Highway 61, and the rivers were all completely full of water, which made for some amazing waterfalls (we’ll upload photos to the flickr site soon, I promise!). We also bummed around Grand Marais for a while, and picked up some souvenirs, including a church christmas decoration that Ryan’s aunt and uncle requested we use their wedding gift to purchase. Our first married christmas decoration! Other than that, we just hung out, ate dinner at the lodge and played a lot of cribbage. It was so relaxing and so much fun.
Well, I should get back to work, but I just wanted to give a short but real entry, instead of the stuff you’ve gotten recently – sorry about that!
I love summer.
Jun 15th
I was sitting here reading blogs (trying to catch up after a 2 week hiatus), and all of a sudden I heard music…like little kid music. And then an ice cream truck drove by on our street. And we are grilling tonight (YAY for wedding presents!). I *heart* summer.
Also, it will be weird going back to work tomorrow. Just sayin’.
The Big Day +2
Jun 9th
Just saying Hi from the North Shore. The wedding was wonderful and the weather was gorgeous. We can’t wait to see all the pictures.
