things i enjoy this week:

• sleep
• diet coke
• pajamas
• san pellegrino sparkling natural mineral water
• my dude, jessica
• the return of fall
• my seat heaters, better known as heat seaters because i always say it wrong
• fiona apple
• talking to my cute niece on the phone

things i could really do without:

• blind dates
• my very unsophisticated web publishing program
• the sound my alarm makes in the morning
• cold showers that turn from ice to fire in a split second
• roommates (please see the above for more detail)
• late work nights

on the bright side, i’m working on some exciting things. more detail to come!

cat: so are you going to *****’s thing?

me: it’s tonight… right?
answer = no… i have a date tonight, so i’m not going

cat: who is your date with?

cat: AND when you say you have a date, please immediately tell me who it’s with.

cat: don’t just say “i have a date”
because you know i will ask.
thank you.

me: dude. i was getting there
it is, naturally, another blind date
which means great blog material to follow

cat: oh really?! yessssssssssssss!

me: my next-door neighbor is setting me up
she is awesome, and her husband is cool— so hopefully it’s not too bad
BUT he’s a lot older than me
so i’m trying not to freak out about that

cat: oh really. how much older?
and if you report back to me 50, you are NOT going.

me: 11 or 12 years? he’s 35

cat: eh, that’s kind of old.
he lived through the 70s.

me: haha! oh – THAT is awesome

cat: i thought that’d make you feel cool about it

me: so you’re telling me that if i decide to suddenly talk about slap bracelets, we might hit an age barrier?

my favorite season in salt lake is fall. the perfect place in time when jackets are comfortable, but not mandatory. i get the back-to-school butterflies anytime i walk through freshly-fallen leaves, the mountains are beautiful, the halloween excitement begins and i start frequenting einsteins bagels for the city’s best cup of hot chocolate. i love autumn.

apparently, this year, autumn doesn’t love me back. it is bitter cold outside today. rainy, nasty cold. we jumped from summer heat to 50º in one day – how did that happen?! cat lovingly reported, in all her seattle glory, that salt lake made it onto the today show this week because we already have snow in the mountains. yes, snow, and far too early if you ask me. it reminds me of a line from one of my favorite john mayer songs: something’s missing.

“when autumn comes, it doesn’t ask.
it just walks in where it left you last.
you never know when it starts,
until there’s fog inside the glass surrounding your summer heart.”
john mayer | something’s missing

yeah, just like that. only replace fog with snow.

wow. it’s been a crazy couple of weeks. i don’t even know where to start – it’s all such a blur. i obviously survived the event and i feel better about my presentation than i expected. the response from my peers, as well as my superiors, has provided a stronger of justification of my talents. overall it was a success, and more importantly – over.

i am excited for my life to slow down and return to the normalcies (or lack thereof) that eradicate my days.

do you know what’s really good at 2:00am?  diet dr pepper. and those commercial people ain’t lyin’ cuz diet dr. pepper really does taste like regular dr. pepper.

especially at 2:00am.

not only do i no longer write in my blog, but i LIE (please see previous post for further details). sadly, i really do have stories to tell. this is me, nicole, queen of freakish moments. but alas, i have been far too wrapped up in work this week to do much outside my little non-corner office, write beyond powerpoint presentations, breathe without first checking the never-ending to-do list covering my giant white board wall – it’s been pretty fun.

i’m in charge of a meeting in vegas this week and having spent the past five consecutive nights working past midnight, i fear i have an inadequate source brain cells left to shoulder my remaining duties.

want to talk about how i have to give a powerpoint presentation? a FORTY-FIVE MINUTE presentation to colleagues TWICE MY AGE. all-caps are reserved for the times in my life when nothing else will express the terror. you know when you’re driving on the freeway, blasting the tunes, happily singing along, the road starts to curve and you zip around the bend, only to discover a perfectly-positioned cop car pointing a radar gun at you? times that rush by ten and that might compare to the butterflies in my stomach.

my boss is great. i was telling him about how nervous i was and he, mr. “give me a song and i’ll sing it. oh? you want me to tap-dance too? sure, toss me my cane,” just laughed. he shook his head and said, “nicole. who cares how much older they are. you have a choice. it’s like you’re the rookie of a baseball team, you’re the newest and youngest guy. you can either be scared and timid and act like you don’t belong, or you can go out there and play .”

sport’s analogies usually annoy me but i was surprisingly comforted by this one. so i am the rookie. and i’m going to go play. and if i knock over the t-ball stand like i did every single time that one summer, i am going to slowly inch away from the podium and pretend they can not see me.

so… apparently i don’t write in my blog anymore. check back tomorrow and i promise there will be something.

i’m in charge of an event for work and have been hammering out the final details this week. today the event-coordinator had some last-minute concerns about fitting all of the tables in the banquet room. i told him it should work; i sketched out the room and the tables seemed to fit just fine.

i faxed him this:

attn: event-coordinator (who now, undoubtedly, thinks i’m insane)
subject: reception layout (my obsessive-compulsive disorder)

this is just an idea.

i’m not as concerned about the buffet and cocktail tables as i am the others.
this is all to scale and i have placed the six-foot tables three feet apart and three feet from the wall.

let me know what you think.


thanks, nicole

i knew this was maybe a little intense, but didn’t realize how weird it was until after i faxed it. i showed my friend/co-worker the layout to get her opinion and she couldn’t help but laugh when she read the description. i can’t help it if i like things color-coded and precise, but it’s probably for the best that faxes are black and white.