I need to share some things!

Ok so over the past couple days a few things have come up that I feel I need to disperse out to the general populace. In no particular order:

1: Netflix is amazing! Video on demand is incredible and I just watched an incredible Israeli movie called "The Bubble." I highly recommend it if you like a devastating horrifying tear jerker as much as I do.

2: Picking corn by hand BLOWS THE BIG ONE! Don't ever do it.

3: I've been listening to a band called Plushgun for a bit now. Not the most amazing stuff ever but something about it has me hooked. I can't stop listening to "Dancing in a Minefield" Check it out.

4: Rachel sent me a link that is probably the funniest thing I've seen in years. I laughed SO hard.

http://melon.posterous.com/random-thoughts-from-25-35-year-olds

5: I am watching The Daily Show from Thursday September 17th. President Clinton is on. I'm a fan. He looks WAY less stressed than I remember him from when he was in office. He's doing some great work and I respect him greatly.

BUT... he just said "the second thing is, we're putting a real emphasis on women and girls."

I can only begin to imagine how hard Jon Stewart had to bite his tongue. But take a look on Hulu. Good interview.

6: Beth Ditto makes me happy. I've been listening to Gossip's new album recently and it's quality stuff. Might be getting a little overplayed, but I love it and she is amazing.

7: Employers who still require hard copies of resumes and cover letters anger me. WHO DOES THAT!!???

That's all for now. Hope you enjoyed.

Minnesota Brownie Exchange

When you require a pan of brownies in order to enter the party you end up with a LOT of brownies. 36 pans in fact. What a glorious thing. Brownies with Caramel, or peanut butter. Brownies with S'mores, or mint sauce. Cake-y brownies, or gooey fudgy brownies. Spicy Chipotle brownies, Sea Salt, and Orange Ginger brownies. Oh how magical it all was.

I won't be eating another brownie for a while though.

Hmmm new considerations.

The job search continues.

I'm finding new things and some of them are quite interesting opportunities, but I can only imagine the people doing the hiring are absolutely inundated with hundreds of applications. How do I possibly stand out?

For now I'm just calling in any connection I can find. Hopefully it'll at least get my application a second look.

I met with Lisa the other day for lunch though and we came up with an alternate plan. When we were in Florence Italy Junior year there was a bar we frequented that had tasty burritos, AMAZING guacamole, and excellent margaritas with an awesome Happy Hour price. It was run by this little old man and his one blender and counter full of fruit so it took a bit of time before you actually got your drink. Especially when a group of 12 of us showed up and were the only ones there.

Lisa and I are stealing this idea. Our business plan for competition is simple. Space across the street from this old man, same menu (steal recipes if we have to), but there is one important change... TWO blenders! We'll be loaded before you know it. Nice knowing you suckers. I'm going to Italy!

Internship: DONE Job: Yes please!

Well the trip to Utah went off well. Though I did have a moment of freaking out as it looked like Cedar City was on FIRE on my way down from SLC. It wasn't. It was a "Controlled" Burn. I had my doubts.

The presentation went well. Nothing fantastic, but good. So I now have officially completed my MFA! WOOT!

I spent a couple days in SLC afterward visiting some friends. Good food, random driving around no where in particular, great people, it was grand and relaxing.

Now, I'm back in Minnesota looking for work. There are a handful of things I'm interested in and plenty that I'm applying to anyway. I haven't gotten responses from anything really, but I'm utilizing all the connections I can find for the ones I'm actually interested in.

In the meantime, I might be picking corn for a couple weeks. We'll see how that goes. Work is work and I need to fill my time with something. Plus a little income can't hurt right?

Life is pretty much boring right now. Sorry.

The end is REALLY close.

I haven't even missed a full day yet, and I already miss my internship...

But it is my Birthday! Went to lunch with the family and now I'm spending the afternoon working on my presentation for later this week.

Now that the internship is officially finished (and they gave me a lovely send off), I have a trip back to Utah on Wednesday, presentation Thursday, defense meeting Thursday. That is all that stands in the way of being completely done!

Now I just need to see if I can get away with making people call me "Master Tyler."

Unlikely? We'll see.

NERD ALERT!!!

This week was the COOLEST!

Tuesday and Wednesday after work we got to observe some research Focus Groups. Patrons had been called based on previous ticket giveaways and asked to participate. We got some really good results with almost all 4 panels filled out completely. There was a range of types of people and obviously a range of opinions. It was super cool for several reasons:

1: We got to sit behind the two way mirror and observe the whole thing while criticizing and griping about people.

2: we got some really useful feedback on several items

-a mailing we were planning was less than helpful to the panels

-we're already training some bad behavior

-flashy colors are eye catching and without them people don't care.

-some graphics need re-working

-people don't read their mail.

3:I made a networking connection with the woman running the focus groups. She works for an Arts Consulting and Market Research company.

4: we learned several great lessons.

-Chinese food is not so great luke-warm

-fortune cookies don't hold actual fortunes anymore

-that mailing we were going to print on Thursday wouldn't have been effective

(STOP THE PRESSES)

-Always check the sound proofing on your observation room before leaping from your seat and yelling at the participants "Don't you read your F&@%ing mail!?)

All in all a wonderful experience. More on wrapping up the internship later.

I suck at Blogging.

So.

How's it going?

Ok well. I'm gonna give a quick re-cap of recent events.

Work is going amazingly well. I am loving this internship and my time there has been SO unbelievably worthwhile. I've only got two weeks left, which is a little sad. So I warned my co-workers today that I'll be leaving soon and if they need me to work on anything they better get it to me soon. A couple weeks ago we had our annual office rejuvination effort. The President has this pet project where every year in July everyone spends two work days cleaning out their offices, files, and generally tidying up the whole building. It sounded awful, but it's a really good idea. Especially when the follow through actually happens. Without that, the whole place would be so cluttered and unorganized I don't even want to think about it.

There is lots of craziness right now as the Tech and Ticket office people work on updating and interating both Patron's Edge and Raiser's Edge. These are our ticketing system and Development database system. They both are getting lots of new capabilities and are being integrated so that they cooperate better. It's a very good thing and will be helpful and amazing and exciting. But at the moment... it's just obnoxious and there's lots of stressing out about it.

In other news, I'm getting a little excited to head back to Utah! It's only for a few days and I'll get to hang with those people I miss like crazy. So I'm flying into SLC and driving down to Cedar City for a couple days. Then I'll spend the rest of the weekend in Salt Lake chillin and visiting.

Most importantly, I have several leads on jobs. Hopefully something will come through soon. Keep your fingers crossed!