Friday Facts

Fact: I am starting to make friends at work.  I am very excited about this!  I expected it would take time to get to know people, especially since there are a few hundred people at the company, but there are a few that I've gotten to know a bit better and it's making the days very pleasant.

Fact:  I saw the most majestic rainbow I've ever laid eyes on yesterday.  It was pouring buckets and buckets of rain, when suddenly it stopped and the sun shone through the clouds practically blinding me.  I looked to my left and saw a complete, intensely bright, perfectly arched rainbow.  Not only that, but there was a SECOND full rainbow (slightly less bright but still very prominent) above it.  Absolutely beautiful.  I love rainbows.  There have been two times in my life where I have been in prayer about very specific things and I've seen rainbows that I know were a gift from God as a reminder that he keeps his promises. Once I was on a mountaintop at sunrise and it wasn't even raining. Call me silly if you want, but I know when the Holy Spirit is making himself clear to me, and he definitely has done that via rainbows before.  But those are stories for another post.  Yesterday's rainbow was just a beautiful surprise after a very rainy several weeks.

Fact: The air pressure in all four of my tires is ridiculously low... It has been for probably two months, yet I refuse to stop and put air in them.  It's like I expect a guy to pop out of nowhere and do it for me.  In the past I've always relied on my dad or a boyfriend or a guy friend to do that stuff for me, but it's time to put on my big girl panties and do it myself.  Maybe tomorrow...

Fact: My current favorite color to wear is blue.

Fact: I am absolutely loving the church group I started going to a couple months ago.  I've never seen the Holy Spirit so at work in a group of people.  His presence is completely tangible and each week I leave feeling completely encouraged and excited about all that God is doing in our lives.

Fact: Tonight is girls night and I'm looking forward to it.  Me and a few of the girls are going to eat pizza, watch footage of the royal wedding from this morning, and pretty much just be lazy tonight.

Fact: I write ads at work and really love that I get to do this.  The company I work for makes a lot of sheets, pillows, towels, blankets, etc... so usually I write about those things.  Yesterday and today however, I had the privilege of writing about incontinence pads... one of the lesser-known items that we market.  It was...interesting... to say the least to research and write about incontinence.  At least I got a good laugh or two in :)

I suppose seven is a solid number of facts to leave you with.  Happy weekend everyone!

Easter Weekend

Easter weekend was a wonderful few days!  My friend Savannah visited from Nashville and we had an excellent time.  Some of the highlights were:

-A delicious Easter meal with my extended family
-Painting pottery
-Dying Easter eggs
-Enjoying hours of good and meaningful conversation

Here are a few photos of the pottery painting and egg dying:

Please note the nuns on TV in the background.  We were watching the Sound of Music and laughed hysterically when we realized they were in the photo. 

We were hoping to be able to spend some time outside this weekend, but the typical rainy and grey Cincinnati weather prevented that.  It was still a really great weekend.  It's tough living with your best friends for four years then suddenly being scattered all over the country.  And no matter how many phone conversations you have or how many texts you exchange throughout the week, there is nothing like spending quality time together. I'm glad Savannah and I had the opportunity to do that this weekend. 

I Heart Cincinnati

Ever since moving back home to Cincinnati last summer, I feel like a bit of a tourist in my hometown.  I suddenly want to experience all of the typical Cincinnati attractions.  Some I have been to as a child, but there are many I've never experienced at all.  In the past few weeks I've gone to the Museum Center, the Conservatory, and  Red's game.  Luckily I have some pretty cool friends who are always up for doing new things.  Here are a few pictures from the Reds game.

James was a good sport about taking three girls to a baseball game

Great American Ballpark and it's awesome river view

The river view later that night...beautiful!

I took some photos at the conservatory the day I was there, but the photos hardly do it justice!  It was so beautiful... especially in the spring weather. 

Outside the Krohn Conservatory in Eden Park

I love the waterfall!

So, those are my latest hometown adventures!  More to come. I'm so glad the weather had warmed up enough to experience more outdoor activities.  I'm looking forward to the Easter weekend and celebrating the resurrection with extended family and friends.  

Happy News

One of my very best friends is coming to visit me for Easter!

This is Savannah.  We used to live together... oh how I miss those days!  This is the person I call first when I am ecstatic about good news and the person I call crying when I've had a difficult day.  We have traveled together, laughed together, prayed together, studied together, "gotten in trouble" together, eaten lots and lots of mexican food together, cried together, ran together, and got to spend just about every day together for two years.  We live almost five hours away from each other now, but our friendship has been strong enough to handle the distance.  And when we get together, it's as if no time had passed at all.

I am particularly excited to celebrate Easter with her, because we have made it a point to share in the Lenten season together.  We have been able to encourage each other daily as we pursue God in newer and deeper ways over the past several weeks.  It makes my day when Savannah texts me to tell me she's praying for me, or shares a scripture with me that she knows I need to hear.

I can't wait for Easter weekend!

Raindrops and Hairdryers

Well, today was the first day at my new job!  I woke up bright and early to give myself plenty of time to get ready and even had time to sip a cup of coffee and have some quiet time before heading off to work.  It was a rainy Monday morning, but I optimistically decided that the rain was my friend as I knew it would wash away the  pesky pollen and alleviate some of my allergy symptoms.

So, as I drove the short drive to work, I was actually feeling a sense of gratitude for the rain.  Upon my arrival at work, the rain quickly became my enemy!  I parked what felt like a mile away from the building and trudged my way through what can only be described as a MONSOON to the entrance of the office.  The wind was blowing like crazy and the rain was pouring down so hard, that it rendered my umbrella useless.  I stumbled into the office completely soaked from head to toe.  I literally looked like I had jumped fully clothed into a swimming pool.  I tried to towel off with paper towels from the restroom, but it did little to absorb the massive amounts of water that had permeated the fabric of my pants. As I walked through the hall, my pants made a loud sloshing sound each time I took a step.  I returned to the front lobby where I met another new hire who looked stickingly similar to a young Alec Baldwin.  I immediately noted that he was completely dry.  Apparently within minutes of my arrival at the building the rain had stopped completely.  Oh the irony.  Alec walked, while I sloshed, down the hall to HR where we completed endless paperwork.  

Shortly thereafter I was delivered to the marketing department where I met some very nice people who I will be working with.  Despite the fact that my clothes were soaking wet, things went pretty smoothly for the rest of the morning.  First days are always a little stressful getting acclimated to things, but it went a lot better than I thought.  Right before lunch, I visited the second floor restroom.  When I walked in, I noticed that there were hair dryers installed on the wall on either side of the sink.  At once I wished I had discovered this bathroom earlier when I was drenched from head to toe. Without thinking, I exclaimed out loud  "HAIRDRYERS?!?! I could've used one of these this morning!" Only once the words had escaped my mouth, did I notice that I was not alone in the bathroom.  I saw a pair of feet beneath one of the stalls.  I quickly hid in another stall as to avoid an awkward encounter with a women who was undoubtedly judging the crazy girl who talked to herself about hair dryers.  

The others in my department went out to lunch, but I had packed mine, so I ate in the lunch room.  I felt like the new kid at school eating alone in the Cafeteria.  I wish I had thought to bring a book or magazine to read so that I could at least appear as if I was intentionally sitting alone.  Here is a goal I hope to achieve by Friday: find friends to eat lunch with!

The afternoon went by pretty quickly; I attended a meeting and started working on the monthly health and wellness newsletter that I am responsible for.  Mishaps and embarrassing moments are bound to happen when you're new, but I'm very easily able to laugh at myself, so none of them put a damper on my day.  I'm really grateful to have this job and excited to see how the rest of this week goes. 

New Job!

Well, yesterday I accepted a job offer!  I am very excited about this new opportunity and even more excited about the way it all came about.

Over a month ago, I was at a career networking event and met Lisa, the woman who ran the group.  We got to talking and decided to meet the next week to go over my resume and talk some more to see if there was anything she could do to help me in my job search.  We got together the next week, and she gave me a lot of awesome advice... before I left she pulled up an email she had from a company, we will call it "Company A."  The HR department of Company A was looking for someone to be an assistant to their CEO and asked Lisa if she knew anyone that would be a good fit for the position.  She seemed to think I would be a good candidate for it, and sent them my resume.  I had my doubts about whether or not they would want to interview me, because the job description called for five years of experience, and I graduated college less than a year ago.

Despite the fact that I didn't fully qualify for the job, Company A called me about a week later!  They wanted to set up an interview.  The day before the interview, I was researching the company on LinkedIn and realized that my neighbor, Todd had just been hired on there.  I called him to see if he had any advice for me going into the interview process, and he was able to give me some information and said I could put him down as a reference.  He also wrote a very nice recommendation email to the HR department.  I was excited, to not only have Lisa's recommendation, but Todd's as well.  In addition, I had a family friend, Bill who retired from Company A, who I was also able to use as a reference.  They say it's all about who you know, and I was able to go into the interview feeling well-connected.

The interview lasted three hours!  I spoke to three different people individually and extensively.  I found out one of the women in the HR department had graduated from my college (it's rare to meet fellow alumni because the school is a small Christian university), and another woman I interviewed with had visited my school with her daughter, so she was familiar with it.  I rarely run into people who have heard of the school I went to.  I left feeling like I presented myself really well and that I would fit in well at this company. I was told I would hear back by the end of the following week about whether or not I had been selected to continue in the interview process.

That next week, I went to the beach with my friends, which was really nice because, although I was eager to hear back from them, being on vacation definitely alleviated some of the stress that comes from waiting.  The week came to an end, and I hadn't heard anything.  Early the following week, they got in touch with me and told me they wanted me to complete some online assessments as the next step in the interview process.  So, I gave Company A another three hours of my life and did their online tests.  It tested proficiency with different types of software, and lengthy business assessment at the end.  I kept thinking to myself I don't have an MBA... how am i supposed to know this stuff???  I felt like I did absolutely horrible on the assessments and was honestly embarrassed to submit them.

That same week, I had a phone interview with a company in another city.  We will call it Company B.  The phone interview went really well, and they invited me to travel to their office the following Wednesday for a second, in-person interview.  I was convinced that it was God opening another door, because I was sure my poor performance on the assessment had cost me my opportunity at Company A.

When Company A called me the next Monday and left me a voice-mail... I was really nervous to call them back because I knew they had seem my exam results and I was convinced that they couldn't possibly have been good.  I returned the call and spoke to a woman in HR (one of the ones I had interviewed with).  She told  me they had decided to fill the position with an internal candidate with more experience.  I was thinking to myself companies always use the "internal candidate" excuse to let other applicants down easily. She went on to say that they really liked me and thought that I had a lot to offer.  I was only half listening because I was thinking they tell everyone this, she just feels bad for not hiring me, so she's just saying nice things about me to make me feel better.  My thoughts were interrupted when she went on to say that because they liked me so much, she and the other two woman with whom I had interviewed got together and created a position in their marketing department for me!  Suddenly I was all ears... I realized she wasn't just saying nice things because she felt guilty for not hiring me, she was offering me a job!  It was very exciting news, but I knew that I was interviewing with Company B  that Wednesday, so I asked if I could get back to them with my answer.

Two days later, I traveled to Company B to interview with them. A family friend who works for the company told me that she got the impression from the head of marketing that I was the favored candidate for the position. I had been praying for weeks on end about these interviews and the whole job search process in general.  I was beginning to think that God was answering my prayers in an unexpected way and was perhaps leading me to relocate to a different city.  I was extremely prayerful as I traveled to Company B and spent time there.  I was begging God to make it clear to me if he wanted me to relocate to this city.  I felt very uneasy the entire time I was there.  I went into it expecting to feel a strong confirmation that I was being led there, but instead I felt the opposite.  As a traveled home, I felt more and more peaceful the closer I got to home.  I felt like God was guiding me right back to where I came from.  I was honestly a little confused that I felt that way because I went into it expecting to feel led to this other city.

When I got home, I had a week before Company B was to get back to me regarding their hiring decision.  I felt almost certain God wanted me to stay where I was but continued to pray about it and be very open to moving if God were to lead me to.  As each day passed, I became increasingly convinced that I should accept Company A's offer.  Yesterday, I finally called them to tell them I accept.  When I spoke to HR they told me that they were just about to call me that very day to increase the amount of their offer!  I called them before they contacted me, and they still chose to give me the higher offer.  I was blown away and just took that as one more sign that I was making the right decision.  When I look back over the process I can see that God led me to Company A in several ways:

-They let me in the door to interview for a position I wasn't even qualified for
-I am sure I did poorly on the assessment, but they still called me back
-They CREATED a job for me.  I don't know how often this happens... but I know in this economy, companies are cutting positions more than they are creating them.
-They increased my offer, after I had already accepted a lower amount.

God is so good and has shown his provision to me in so many ways over the past month or so.  I'm excited to begin this new chapter and I confident that God led me here and has great things in store for this next phase of my life!

Birthday Weekend

I had an absolutely wonderful birthday weekend!  I got to spend it with the greatest friends and family I could ever ask for!  I don't have any photos from Friday night, but here are a few from dinner with the girls on Saturday, and a couple from Sunday afternoon.

This is Allison.  We were both born on the same day in the same hospital.  We met in third grade and have been celebrating our birthday together ever since.  

Some of the best friends I could ever ask for!

(Whitney, Adrienne, Me, Allison, Renee and Jenn)

I'm so glad Renee was in town from North Carolina for the occasion!

Two of our awesome waiters who provided lots of laughs during our dinner

Sunday afternoon after church and lunch, Whitney and I spent several hours at the park because the weather was BEAUTIFUL!  We took lots of silly pictures.  

We ended the day with our weekly Sunday night dinner at James and Jenn's house.  What a fun weekend!!!