Dec. 15: 5 MINS

5 minutes. Imagine you will completely lose your memory of 2010 in five minutes. Set an alarm for five minutes and capture the things you most want to remember about 2010.

The things I would want to remember most about 2010 are as follows:

• the day I got engaged. Dinner, Sweet Jenny's Ice Cream and a stroll through Glenn Falls Park.
• Buying, renovating, and moving into my first house. I bought the house 9/2009 but I didn't officially move in until 1/2010
• My fiance moving in 8/2010
• Asking all of my closest friends to be bridesmaids
• The new friends I have met in 2010
  

Dec. 14: APPRECIATE

Appreciate. What's the one thing you have come to appreciate most in the past year? How do you express gratitude for it?

I truly mean it when I say I have come to appreciate my mother more than anything this past year. I think back to when we'd fight and not speak and it kills me to think how selfish and stupid I was. Especially now I put it in perspective because of my wedding. I would be lost without her. This is her first and last child's wedding (my brother is gay and my sister ran away and got married and shut my mom out of everything) It kills me everyday to think how inactive my siblings are with my mother. Do they not need her like I do? Do they ever think that she needs them? They're both too self consumed to ask themselves that question though. Instead my brother calls, maybe once a month to talk about himself. He's promised her for the past year that he'd come home to visit, and he hasn't. I'm pretty sure he'll come up with an excuse to not attend my wedding as well (nice, huh?) I guess you can say I make up for both of them. Even though she lives 5 mins away from me I still call her at least every other day. She knows mostly everything going on in my life. We go to the gym together maybe 2-3 nights a week. We have retail therapy together of course. And lunch dates on the weekends every now and then. Not to mention our weekly Sunday family dinners that my fiance and I go to at my parents house. Since my mom is older (almost 70) it kills me to think I need to bend over backwards t appreciate the time I have with her, because I know she may not be around most of my adult life. And I start to cry everytime I think of that.

Dec. 13: ACTION

Action. When it comes to aspirations, its not about ideas. It's about making ideas happen. What's your next step?

I'm pretty sure I'm beating a dead horse if I say my next action is to get a new job.

YES YES YES I know you've all heard me.

So instead I'm going to say I aspire to be something different next year. I'm going to stretch myself and my creativity further. Maybe marketing isn't my only thing. Maybe I could go to cooking classes at night! Or cake decorating classes. Maybe I should go to beauty school. Either way I'm going to step out and try doing something I enjoy doing on my own but take it to the next level professionally!

Dec. 11: 11 Things

11 Things. What are 11 things your life doesn't need in 2011? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life?

1. My job, first and foremost. I have decided that I will search for marketing/comm jobs as well as secretary/admin jobs...whatever i can find just to be happy. Then once the wedding is over I will focus on either going back to school full time or taking time off and finding the job of my dreams.

2. Stress, that's a given for everyone I think. I will keep up with the gym since it's my #1 stress reliever.

3. Drama. NO MORE DRAMA! Block it out, bitch it out. I will do whatever I have to not to deal with petty nonsense...if you call me a bridezilla I do not care, no one is raining on my parade.

4. I could do without these ridic gas prices in 2011. Not sure what I can do to change that though, there's no way I'm getting a hybrid or 4 cylinder vehicle (sorry...im green in other ways!)

5. Unneeded advice. I am never shy to ask for advice! Please do not tell me every detail you had for your own wedding, or every idea you think I should do for mine, UNLESS I ask.

6. Panic Attacks. I need to just calm it down. The world will not come to an end if I am unable to check everything off of my "theknot.com checklist" each month.

7. Envelopes for money at church. I feel guilty enough when I cannot find time to go to mass every Sunday. I do not need to be reminded that the envelopes are used for attendance as well as donations that benefit the church. I'm all about going to church and putting money in the basket but the designated envelopes almost make me rebel more.

8. Procrastination. I should not wait until the last minute to get things done. This is the year to be more organized!

9. Potato Chips. These are blacklisted. I gotta stop eating these for my waistline. Whats the point in my personal training if i just come home and stuff my face with salt and vinegar chips?

10. Pressure to lose unrealistic weight. I need to understand I will probably never weigh 108lbs ever again. As long as I keep working out and eating right I will feel great! I need to adjust my goal weight.

11. Stress when it comes to $$. I focus a lot on money and not having any. I need to be happy I have ANY to begin with and learn how to better budget myself instead!

Dec. 10: WISDOM

Wisdom. What was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out?

The wisest decision I made this year was to say YES when Joe proposed. We have been best friends for over 5 years and I cannot picture spending the rest of my life with anyone else. We've been having fun planning the wedding of our dreams...and the honeymoon too! :-) We're very excited for the next step in our lives. Just don't start pushing us on the baby thing...

All I Want For Christmas...

is a new job.

It's tough out there. I'm sure many of you understand how I'm feeling. I've been applying and interviewing for about a year now. It's a rat race and it's all about who you know and the connections you have.

Despite work my 2010 has been fabulous! New house and renovations, I got engaged, life outside of work could not be better!

I hate complaining but I just need to let out all of the stuff that's been happening to me at my job because each day I get closer and closer to walking out the door and not coming back, and today was the icing on the cake.

Earlier this year our salesman was caught stealing money and business from the company so he was let go. Since then the salesman was not replaced. Business has just been getting slower and slower. My boss is the type where he likes the money that goes in his pocket but hed rather be working on the jobs than getting them, which hes fully admitted to. Anyways his son quit his job here (through a TEXT message to me) soon after the salesman, leaving just me, a designer, and the boss. Since then my boss has been acting weird. One minute hes goofing around and in the best mood ever and the next hes the meaning person I have ever met. I couldn't understand the quick changes but I decided to just focus on my work and ignore it. Well now my boss smells like alcohol, slurs like he's been drinking all day & night, but again I just wanted to ignore it. That's his business not mine (in regards to his work and his life). Well he constantly makes comments to me about how my engagement will end in tears because noone can stay together, my fiance is just using me (mind you I have NEVER spoken to him about my personal life/relationships). Then he goes on about how much he hates Italians and how they're all stuck up assholes who expect the world to bend over backwards for them (I'm Italian). He told me not to buy my house because he doesn't know how long my position will be around for. I think he thinks I'm his daughter. Well today as soon as I walked in to punch in at the time clock he runs up to me to tell me one of his long winded stories about "F*ck so and so"(no joke) and i had my arms crossed under my chest. He was so into his story that he grabbed my arm SO hard that my arms came uncrossed and I lost my balance like I was going to fall. I jerked my arm back out of his grasp and prepared myself for a lash out. He acted like he didn't even recognize what had just happened! So what did I do? Ignored it and stayed away from him the rest of the day making excuses like "he must have been drunk" "he wont remember" "he didnt realize how hard he grabbed onto me" and now I'm just angry because I know that's not right. You shouldn't touch an employee. PERIOD.

But what do I do? Any advice would be very helpful. Has anyone else gone through anything like this professionally?

Dec. 9: PARTY

Party. What social gathering rocked your socks off in 2010? Describe the people, music, food, drink, clothes, shenanigans.

Does a Dave Matthews Band concert count? Well it does now! I'm kind of low-key when it comes to parties. Post-college days I'm pretty boring.


I did attend the DMB concert this year. I was beyond excited for months before the concert. It was the first arena tour of his I had ever been too AND it was the first show of the tour. He must love Buffalo! Who doesn't though? This event also ties into my Community Reverb10 post from a couple days ago as this event was completely setup between me and my friend on twitter. We laugh about it because we barely see each other and we don't text or call, we just tweet one another almost daily. We went to college together and were within the same group of friends so we were not strangers on twitter. ANYWAYS back to DMB...the concert was beyond my high expectations. Even though our seats were in the 300 section it felt like the best seat in the house! Unlike the outdoor theme park tours I've been too, I was actually able to hear every song and watch all of the bands movements. The whole arena was filled for the sold out concert. The people were interesting. There was a mix of young, old, parents with kids, hipsters, stoners (obviously bc it's DMB). There were 3 kids in front of us that had to be in their mid-late teens and they were on some sort of drug. They certainly kept us occupied at times. See image below of me being pissed off at the obnoxious drugged out teens...
Despite the obnoxiousness the concert was by far the best DMB and possibly the best concert of everyone I've seen. I sang my heart out to every song!