Potty Mouth

So Nathan's co-workers took us out to lunch today for a little "congrats on your wedding deal". We went to the Sandy Springs diner and had a great time and even got a great gift card. Before we left I went to the restroom. Dont worry...I got locked in the stall!! The latch was completely stuck and my fingers were nearly bleeding by me trying to get it unstuck!

What the heck am I supposed to do? The opening from the bottom of the door to the ground was way to small for my to squeeze under, and I would have had to have been Superman to dive off the toilet over the top of the stall door.

Luckily, the opening on the stall next to me was just wide enough for me to shimmy underneath it. But because the bathroom was kind of small my face ended up literally on the toilet. The whole time I was panicking that someone would come in and see me laid out on the nasty bathroom floor with my face basically in the toilet!!

SO Nasty and embarrassing...but Nathan and I had a REALLY good laugh when it was all said and done. Seriously...this kind of stuff only happens to me!!!

What in the World...

Little update on my life. Nathan and I are getting married in 6 short weeks!!! I cannot believe how quickly the summer has flown by! While I am of course stressing about detials, Nathan is shooting the breeze and telling me to chill out!

You all may have heard from the grapevine that have a few jobs...and i feel like I am adding to the number daily! I work about 2 days a week at Ann Taylor Loft, work some weekends with a catering company, have an internship with YMCA Atlanta PR department (work from home), and baby sit a few days a week!! In about 2 weeks, i'll be back to substitute teaching in Cobb County, and I will also be teaching a few dance classes for my mom on Wednesday nights ...

The Lord is very much teaching me not only the value of hard work, but also patience. A friend of mine who has been out of work for quite some time just got a job this week, and I am beginning to realize that until I am content where I am, the Lord has no reason to reward me for my patience.

Meanwhile, Nathan's internship is going GREAT!! We are praying for a full time job to be offered with the city of Sandy Springs right around the time of our wedding.

We signed a lease on an apartment in Kennesaw just the other day, its right off the interstate, so very convenient for him to get to 75, while still keeping me in Cobb County for subbing and such. Wish I had a funny story or something to tell...but life if pretty much at a high stress level right now and I"m just so ready to walk down that aisle!!

Making Do

It's been a long time since I've written on this thing....but here is a little update on my life.

I am currently employed by my best friend's aunt and uncle. She recently had ACL surgery and basically needed help around the house. So I run errands for her, water plants, take kids to practices. Basically anything she would be doing if she weren't on crutches. Very fun to spend time with such a spiritually grounded woman and pretty lucrative pay!!

Going to Sea Island with a family as their nanny for about 7 days at the end of May....super sweet deal: awesome pay, all expense paid, and the beach :)

Applied for a part time job at Ann Taylor Loft...we'll see

Also applied for a job at a Christian school for the Director of Communications. I know several kids that go to the school, so having their parents as references pull some serious weight.

One last bit of news: I got a random e-mail from the YMCA of Atlanta asking if I was interested in a summer internship with their communications department. Heck yes I am!!! This was totally the Lord, because I submitted my applications to them about 4 months ago, they hired someone else, and are now hiring a second person and remembered my resume. :)

ALSO.....took our engagement pictures the other day and they were so fun! To view all of them go to http://www.shelliallenphotography.com/ click on Clients, and the password is "forever" .

She is awesome!!

The Church of the Laughing Jesus

Quick shout out to the VSU Red Hots & Co-Ed cheerleaders: Both won National Championships this weekend in Daytona!

Now, about The Church of the Laughing Jesus.....

My friend Natalie Webb heard about this "Laughing Jesus" this morning at the bridal shower. After doing a bit of research, I quickly learned how passionate these followers are! What I gather from the little I have read, is that it's a movement of people that are trying to educate Christians that the "original Christians were inspired men & women who saw how good life could be if we would just wake up & live in love". They claim that contemporary Christians see Jesus as a "man of sorrows", that we see a distorted image of Jesus being tortured to death on a cross.

I by all means think that the Christ that I follow was a laughing Jesus, a light-hearted Jesus, a teaching Jesus, a compassionate Jesus. But it is also important to remember that He most certainly was tortured to death on a cross to pay for your sins and mine. It was the ultimate sacrifice of love.

Matthew 24:46 says, "He told them, "This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. "

Happy Easter and laugh on!

Do Gooders

First of all....who doesnt LOVE this picture?!?!

A popular discussion at my apartment in college was the controversial topic of lying. A friend of mine posed the question, "If a man came into your house and said that he would kill your friend unless you told him you had eaten a bowl of cocoa puff that morning, what you you do?" The point he was trying to get at was, what is the "Christian" thing to do? Certainly it couldnt be to lie....

We are indeed taught not to lie....so how do we justify our lying in this circumstance. Chances are, you most certainly did NOT eat cocoa puffs that morning for breakfast, but is it justifiable to lie about in God's eyes?

Now, this topic can be argued for literally hours in my apartment. People will start whipping out doctirines and theologies and getting really heated.

My answer is simple, and can most certainly be backed up the the words of Jesus himself. In Matthew 12, Jesus is teaching about the Sabbath. In verses 11 & 12 He says that if your sheep (possibly donkey in some translations) falls into a well on a Sunday, is it lawful to "work" to save his life? (remember that at this time, animals were ESSENTIAL to life and none could be spared) Well, technically, no. The Sabbath is a day of rest, where in the time of Jesus, absolutely NO work was done. BUT, because Jesus is a lover and not a fighter, he comes back to say that a mans life is much more valuable than that of a sheep, for it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath, even if it takes some work!

SO, if a man asked me if I ate cocoa puffs for breakfast and my friend would die if I told the truth, heck yes I would lie!!!

Moral of this story: Life trumps law, Jesus said so himself!!

Update: got a part-time job with a catering company :)

Oh No She Didn't!

Sources say that due to the economic crisis, many women are turning to Exotic Dancing as alternate means of income. Now, not at all do I think this is a reputable career, but hey, a girls gotta do what a girls gotta do!!

However, if a woman is going to put herself in this situation, she doesn't need to expect to be treated like royalty. There are actually advocacy groups for strippers/exotic dancers to protect their "rights". One is called "Lusty Ladies". Um, I think the moment you sign up for a job like that, you pretty much give up most moral/ethical rights.

I'm thinking of going into it myself if nothing works out soon ;) I was a Red Hot after all! Substitute teacher by day, stripper by night.

But seriously, not that I condone such an occupation, if it will pay the bills for a few months, why not? Desperate times call for desperate measures...

Your opinion? what type of rights do exoctic dancers really have??? And...would you do it??

Stop the Salesmen!

My mother and I went to the mall today to find her a dress for my wedding, and we were shocked at the amount of people bugging us about buying things, or telling us how they could save us money!

We walked by one kiosk for TMobile, and the guy started with the usual, "How you ladies doing this afternoon?" (Note to self: whenever it starts that way....it's never good!)

He proceeded to ask us about our cell phones, and our providers, promising if we switched to TMobile he could cut our bill in half! And no matter how obvious it looked that we were trying to walk away and tell him we were not interested, he was relentless! "But ma'am, I don't need much of your time, just a few minutes to evaluate how much you could save...."

We then ran into a man wanting us to try some if his special hand lotion made from coconuts.....we continued on our way as he chased after us promising it would make our skin smooth!

Also in the past few days we have received several newsletters or business cards taped to our mailbox pushing a cleaning service or yard work.

Excuse me sir or madam, do you want people chasing you down the hall with lotion?? How about giving you 101 reasons to change phone providers? NO!! I think part of the problem is that you don't necessarily see what you do as a problem, because it is afterall, your job.

Admitting you have a problem is the first step; Hi, my name is _____ _____, and I'm an annoying sales person.

Name Dropping

I have found in my short 22 years of life, that of all the things that can be used to your benefit, name dropping works!!

Just this week, I had 2 friends contact me with job opportunities they had heard about. In one situation, the friend's brother was the point person for the job, so obviously saying I was a friend of his sister got me immediately in the door!

In the other case, a friend had heard of a job opening randomly, and let me know. I then contacted another friend of mine who had previously been employed at this same place, she told me to use her and her husband's names as references or somewhere in a cover letter, which went over VERY well when I dropped my application off today.

One of the jobs is the Regional Manager for the Special Olympics, and the other is Director of Communications for Mt. Paran Christian School in Marietta.

Long story short, use every single contact you know of to help you out, whether that be in search for a job, or other endeavors.

Shout outs: Rylin Crane & Kaitlin Follrath!!

Why I quit my job on Day 1

I started a "real" job on Monday as a Sales/Marketing Representative for AT&T. And let me just tell you that when I say "sales", I literally mean door-to-door sales. The job is 100% commission based, so no salary whatsoever.

Well, first of all, these people work from 8:00am-6:30pm everyday....which I feel is ridiculous!! 10 1/2 hours a day of straight door-to-door bugging the crap out of people.

So, on Monday, I went out with one of their reps on the "field". We hit 43 small businesses (which is a lot!). Out of those 43 businesses that we visited, you know how many accounts we closed??? ONE! Are you kidding me!?!? If I am going to do something all day everyday, I'm gonna need to make a little more than $40. I could have subbed for 7 hours at a school and made $80!

Let's be honest, all salespeople do is annoying people anyway. We went into restaurants at lunch times trying to sell them phone services....why would you bother a restaurant owner in their peek hours of business?!?!

Long story short, I could not work that long or that hard annoying people to get paid a big check of $40. Therefore, I quit that evening, and am currently being considered for a full-time nanny position and am also submitting my resume for a job at a church.

Most people say, "You must be crazy to quit a job in this economy!". Thanks a lot Einstein, I realize that! But if I can make more money per week substitute teaching and babysitting, then I would MUCH rather do that and look for a "real" job in the meantime!

That's all folks!

Free Stuff!!

Ok, so since we have been engaged, which has not been long, I have learned the value of bargain shopping and getting free stuff! Here is just a small list of the incredible free/VERY discounted things we are getting:

1. Engagement pictures= $0.00 ( BEST pics in town, and she is doing them in return for 10 hours of babysitting for no charge)

2. Wedding Cake=$0.00 (a student at my mom's dance studio is the daughter of a pastry chef at the Culinary Institute of Atlanta, and in exchange for 3 months free tuition of dance, he is doing our cake for FREE!)

3. Wedding Pictures=$400 off the original price (friend of ours whose name will not be mentioned to protect people from hassling him for deals, is giving us an awesome discount. We are getting 7 hours of photography for the price of 5)

4. Save the Dates= Half off + Free printing. We paid less than $30.00 for them. Normally they would have been about $60.00 + printing would have been about $30.00 making the total $90.00.


That is all for now. If you are young an engaged, be encouraged to seek out the deals!!

Questionable Education....

Ally Edge and myself attended a Public Relations conference about a week ago called RealWorld PR. It's primarily for students and recent graduates, so we just went to check it out. Well, little did I know that I would find out that my education pales in comparison to that of people from other schools. Let me tell you why....

First of all, I had my resume critiqued during the day. We took a class in college titled HTML, which is listed on my resume under "skills". The guy reviewing my resume labeled HTML as "completely irrelevant". That's awesome. I had to take this class to graduate, and to the PR world in Atlanta it is deemed as completely irrelevant.

Second, there were several sessions during the conference loosely titled "Social Networking". Things like twitter, linked in, and blogging were mentioned several times. Ally and I sat with girls from Clemson that had entire courses dealing with Social Media. WHAT!?!? No one EVER taught me that in school. I had never even heard of some of these things, much less know the importance of them. People make careers out of blogging....? Who knew?

Lastly, on-line portfolios. This tool was mentioned once in our sophomore year, and then never mentioned again. In the year 2009, when such a vast majority of our world functions via Internet and phone, why was I not taught the importance of on-line portfolios?

Thank you, Valdosta State, for such a relevant and competitive education!

New Job

"Among the unemployed, the number of job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs increased to 7.0 million in January. This measure has grown by 3.2 million during the last 12 months." -US Department of Labor

I got a job yesterday. Which is ironic considering the statistic above. I had one interview with this place last Monday, then spent the entire day there on Thursday as my second interview, and concluded my day with a third interview.

Wentworth Inc. is a sales and marketing firm for Fortune 5oo companies like AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Pinacalle Security, etc. My branch deals specifically with AT&T. It is basically a "door to door" position...which i am not too excited about. BUT the good news is that 80% of small businesses already use ATT for their services anyway, so we're not as much sales people, as update-your-account type people.

Commission based- could be AWESOME!!!!! Or could suck! But from everyone I spoke to, they seemed to be making pretty good money. It's in the heart of downtown Atlanta which is pretty cool, and all the people seemed really nice and friendly.

We shall see.......
Start date: Mon March 9. Full benefits package, paid training, pay check one a week.

Stereotype brought to life

I spent my day at Green Acres Elementary School. It was educational to say they least. It was a "team teaching" position, which means that 2 classes share the same room (total of 25 kids) and 2 teachers share the responsibilities. So, today it was me, and one of the real teachers.

I sub for South Cobb, which has a very diverse demographic. Every kid, with exception of one, was either African America or Hispanic. Now, these kids were very well-behaved, and generally followed directions quite well. But one kid in particular stood out....

We'll call him Robert.

Robert is a super smart 2nd grader. Today they were finishing their "friendly letters" which they had been working on yesterday. The letter could be to whoever the kids chose, and had to have a topic, and some main points, etc, etc.

This was Robert's letter:

"Dear, Dad,
I hope we get to see you soon. I really wish you could see me. I wish you would stop telling us you were coming to see us, and then not show up. You have not seen me in a year.
I love you
Love Your Son,
Robert"

Robert broke my heart today :(

Question...

Here is my beef with blogging...

I understand why people would read the blog of someone semi-famous, or super resourcesful, but why would someone read my blog?

Let's be serious now, this thing has been up and running for 2 days, and I have no followers. Which in my mind is not surpising. I dont read anyone else's blog, so why should they read mine? BUT...if this phenomenon is so big and important to my social networking life, how am I supposed to get people to read it???

Low Prices=Low Morals

I recently watched a documentary called "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price", and was shocked to hear some dirty facts. I have never been too impressed with the establishment in the first place. I have never had good service at a Wal-Mart, I've seen people standing near fruit displays literally eating off of them, I always run into long lines no matter what time or day or night, etc. But after this documentary, the "bad feelings" I have had towards the monopoly have led me to the decision to cease shopping there (until I get married and Nathan will probably force me to!).
Top 6 Reasons I hate Wal-Mart

Point # 1: Poor Healthcare for Workers

• ALABAMA: 3,864 Children of WAL-MART Employees are Enrolled in Medicaid. Why, You ask....because Wal-Mart does not pay their full-time employees enough to have their kids on a regular healthcare program.
• WAL-MART Costs Taxpayers $1,557,000,000,00 to Support its Employees. Again, because full-time employees are paid such a small salary they are forced to live off taxpayer dollars.
• Nearly 10,000 workers with Arkansas' nine largest employers receive public welfare for themselves and their families, according to the state Department of Human Services. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., with 3,971 of its 45,106 employees on public assistance, topped the list." ....why are full-time employees living off government checks?

Point #2: "Full-Time" Status?

• Before 2002, Wal-Mart's definition of full-time was 28 hours per week, and was raised in 2002 to 34 hours per week in order to raise the bar for healthcare eligibility for their employees - as the raise in hours coincided with the increase in eligibility requirements for healthcare
• The average income of a full-time Wal-Mart employee is $17,144. Which is well below the poverty line for a family of 4.

Point #4-Anti-Union

• According to a recent report issued by American Rights At Work ("Wal-Mart: Rolling Back Wages, Workers' Rights, and the American Dream"), at least 59 complaints have been issued by the National Labor Relations Board on the basis that Wal-Mart uses illegal surveillance techniques to monitor union activity inside and outside their stores.
• $7,000 ANTI-UNION CAMERA PACKAGE per store
• $30,000 UNDERCOVER SPY VAN per store
• $100,000 24 hour ANTI-UNION HOTLINE
• $7,000,000 Rapid response team with CORPORATE JET
• FYI- Anti-Union is basically being anti-workers rights

Point #5- Overseas Workers

• Cost for WAL-MART Factory Worker to Assemble: $0.18 (average price for any item)
• Retail cost at Wal-Mart: $14.96
• WAL-MART Imported $18 BILLION from CHINA in 2004. They buy 100% of their merchandise outside of the US.

Point #6- Just Plain Wrong

• Lee Scott (Wal-Mart CEO) earnings for 2005: $27,207,799.00
• On average, Wal-Mart sales clerks -- "associates" in company parlance -- pulled in $8.23 an hour, or $13,861 a year, in 2001
• Sam Walton's (founder of Wal-Mart) family is worth a combined value of $90 billion. The WALTON FAMILY Has Given LESS THAN 1% of Their Wealth to Charity.Bill Gates has given 58%

For these reasons and more, I just cant shop at Wal-Mart. I would rather pay the extra few dollars to shop at Kroger, Publix, or Ingles, than contribute to this capitalist monopoly.

*All facts can be verified at www.walmartmovie.com

Social Networking?

Ever since Facebook became popular, I have been very against other forms of social networking; blogging, twitter, Myspace, etc. I just never saw the need for any of it until yesterday. Myself and a friend of mine attended a Public Relations Conference and they had an entire session devoted to Social Networking. Never in my 4 1/2 years of academia had I been taught the importance of this type of networking. Therefore, I now see and understand the great need for such tools (especially with my degree!), so I have started a blog, as well as joined twitter. I cant promise mine will be as interesting as most, but I at least need to learn to make blogging a habit, because it seems like I tool I will be using in a job someday. :)