Great Opportunities

In business, there are always buzz words that people like to use which make them sound smart, hip, into the game, etc. I think the most overused buzz word right now is "opportunity". I get some many "opportunities" these days that it's starting to give me hives.

Do you remember Pavlov's dog? The bell ringing and the drooling? Just substitute the word opportunity for bell ringing and hiding under your desk and crying for drooling. It's slowly but surely creating a learned response. I am sure once upper management catches wind of this, we will get a new buzz word and the cycle will begin again.

When it was first being used, the word opportunity meant "I have some cool project you can help with" or "I have something that might challenge you in a way that will feed the creative need in a job." Now the word opportunity is synonymous with "I need you to do this task you probably aren't going to enjoy, but I need you to do anyway." I am sure some brilliant manager figured out since it's original meaning had once carried positive vibes, maybe they could use it on their employees who would will fall for it and just do what was asked of them.

Yesterday was just another lucky day for me. I was given an opportunity to go hear some VP talk. You know what I got out of the opportunity? A big fat lecture for an hour on how managers/leaders aren't doing enough and we (myself included) need to step up our game so our division isn't in last place on ratings. The only plus - they fed us cookies beforehand as if to soften the blow. Some opportunity. THANKS!

I know what you put into it determines what you will get out of it. This is the canned statement that usually comes from your manager following any whining about said opportunity. Of course this makes it sound like it was your fault for not embracing it from the start.

I just wish my manager/lead would just be straight with me. Tell me what it is you need me to do and why. I would rather that than some made up BS reason. Maybe it's just me.

/end rant

Outer Banks in October

Last weekend, Rob and I took a trip to the Outer Banks. The purpose of this trip was mainly to scout out places for our wedding ceremony and reception. However, I am not going to lie, any excuse to go to the beach makes it a vacation.

A number of things went well while we were there. The rides up and back were OK. When we stopped for lunch, we got free cookies - huge plus for Rob. Since October is considered a low season, we were able to snag a few local deals. My favorite of these was finding out Monday night is pizza night at Black Pelican. I was planning on getting my favorite pizza anyway, it was a bonus to find out it would cost me $6 less than normal. The tourism office was very helpful and friendly. Since their job is giving out information, we got exactly what we needed.

While we were there, I realized how much different the place is at night. When we go in May, we usually run out to dinner, but it's still light out when we get back. I got a chance to see the Manteo Lighthouse at night, and see the blinking of the Bodie Island Lighthouse as well. Very cool.

Our search for sites went fairly well too. We had appointments with all of the places we wanted to see except one and we squeezed that in there too. I tried to get a variety of places to give us an idea of the options we would have. Below is a list and summary of what each place was.

Mallards Marsh - Located in Wanchese (south of Manteo), it is set in with the marshes and very pretty at night. This is an all inclusive place that takes care of most everything from chairs at your ceremony to your DJ and centerpieces at the event hall. They offer a lot of options, but do most of the work for you. This is a plus when you are planning a wedding from a few states away.

NC Aquarium - Located on the north end of Roanoke Island, it provides an area for a sound side ceremony and then the aquarium for the reception. When you rent the aquarium, you get the entire place for an hour, then for the remaining time you get the rooms you rented. They have tables and chairs and would set them up for us. We would just have to coordinate the rest with the vendors. Oh also, we are not allowed to have live fish for our centerpieces. I think we can handle that.


108 Budleigh - Located in the heart of Manteo, a few blocks from where Rob proposed, this place offers a great location. The deal is we are essentially renting the building which comes with tables and chairs for 150 people. We get the building at 7am in the morning the day of and need to be out by midnight. It's what I like to call the, do it yourself place. But if we wanted to have an all day party, we can. :)

Duck Woods Country Club - This was in Southern Shores, but we wanted to check it out anyway. And that's about as far as this place made it. It's pretty, but reminds us of a hotel and they were pretty explicit about how removed we would be from its "members". Well Mr. Country Club Man, you and your members seem to be fine without us, but thanks anyway.

So now it's left to homework and investigation. Just because they told us they were fabulous doesn't mean they are. We have enough time to check things out so that's what we are doing. Reference checks, Better Business Bureau, and most importantly, what will this cost us? It's a lot of work, but it's mostly fun work. :)

A Little Scary

My mailbox is starting to frighten me. Either it's one big cosmic coincidence OR it knows what I write in my blog. I opened up the box and today March of Dimes decided to do their best to win me over with fancy mailing labels.

These are more Christmas ones so I guess my third cousins may be lucky enough to get a card from me this year. Although their opening statement was, "... I know I've taken a risk in sending you this dime..." Damn right you did. I have a wedding fund to save for! Free money! It was like getting paid to pick up the mail. Thanks!

Maybe I should have a contest where everyone can vote for their favorite address label and I will just throw the rest out. Seriously, this is getting ridiculous. Thankfully it's in a funny way.

Address Labels Continued

Well, this may be record breaking. I got another set of them today. New ones from Susan G. Komen. They are the more hip, new design with my accurate address. I cut them some slack though, it is National Breast Cancer Awareness month. They have a reason. I am no official company sponsor, but it would be cool if you would support them in some way. Heck, if you like Yopliat, just eat yogurt and send in the lids. It's one of the very few charities (other than friend's individual causes they raise money for) that I feel is worthy of my hard earned money.

This also makes me wonder if it's just coincidence that I am getting all of these now or if studies have determined people are willing to chip in money for whatever charity this time of year. I have no idea.

If you get anything kind of mail from me in the coming months, I may slap one of each one on the envelope so you can see how pretty they all are. Although this may just confuse the post office and your mail will get to you in about, oh, say 2010.

Pasta Bella

As mentioned previously, I wanted to try and expand where we ate out. Last night we decided would be our first adventure into the unknown. What I hadn't anticipated was how hard it would be to find a place close (this being a key difficulty - in other words, not downtown) AND reasonably priced that neither of us had been to. In this search I realized how many of these places I have gone to for lunch or an after work thing because I don't live far from where I work. Thankfully, we knew who to call who might have suggestions.

Amanda came to our rescue after I had spent an hour on the internets and racked my brain for where to go. One of the places she suggested was Pasta Bella. It's owned by the same people who run the Marietta Diner which I have been to for lunch and enjoyed. Unfortunately this place was not in our realm of close, but we were getting hungry and didn't care at that point.

Overall, this was a pretty positive choice. It's not in our normal routes to anything else, so we probably aren't going to just pop over and grab a bite. Our waiter was friendly, if not a bit weird. The place smelled of garlic which I thought was pretty yummy. We were both pleased we our dishes and had them for lunch again today. Mine will even work for lunch tomorrow.

A key lesson we have learned, plan ahead on where to go. I think next time won't be too bad because we have some suggestions for downtown and will be willing to go there next time. Our next adventure won't be for a few weeks because we are heading to the Outer Banks next weekend. We get to go to our favorites there instead. :)

Address Labels

I just got back from the mailbox. It was an exciting trip I assure you, but I won't bore you with the details. What I want to tell you about is what was in my mailbox. Another envelope with address labels from a charity.

I used to hate writing out my address on envelopes and often made my own. I don't think that will ever happen again. I seem to have hit the jackpot for accumulating address labels from a number of charities. Some of them I have donated to in the past and others are hoping I will send them money because they happened to drop address labels in my mailbox.

I have been in this apartment for approximately three months now and have received five bundles of address labels. They were from RIT, Habitat for Humanity, Children's Cancer Research Fund, Susan G. Komen, and now the Alzheimer's Association. Three of those were delivered in the past week!

Maybe it's trying to encourage people to write more. Some of them are coming with pads of paper as well, so I might be on to something here. I send all my bills electronically and I don't generally sit down and write a hand written note to anyone, so those uses are out. The only time I really use them is for sending cards. I guess I should start sending more of those out.

At least the ones I got today I can use for my Christmas cards since they are holiday themed. I don't know what's going to happen if I keep getting these though. My problem is that I like them all. I haven't gotten any and said, "Oh gross, I am not putting that on a card", so I guess I will just add them to the pile.

Maybe I will hold a secret contest (which only you will know about) with myself to try and use them all. Or maybe I can build a fort of address labels.... Hmm....

Halloween Countdown

That's right folks, we have entered the Halloween countdown stage. Sure you may have started on November 1st of last year, but this is the home stretch. We are T-30 days. Anything can happen. For those who procrastinate, probably not much will for you, but for the rest of us, it will be a mad race to the finish!

Once again I am working on a top secret Halloween costume, which if I can do correctly, will blow people away! Ok, so I have never really had a costume that blew people away, but hey, there's always the promise. Last year was kind of disappointing that a lot of people didn't know who I was on sight. But then again, I picked a fairly obscure 80s character that the boys really hadn't heard of. The plus side is that my costumes always turn out great and I am proud to show them off when all is said and done.

I do have some logistics issues to work out this year, but believe I have a plan. We are flying in, so some of that is dictated by luggage and what TSA considers "normal". I am sorry if you are in the airport on Halloween weekend, be prepared for some odd things. I wish they had a sense of humor.

Here's to another great Halloween season!! Candy corn is giving me cavitities as we speak!