Update on life

To those of you who read/liked my post earlier this week, thank you for the love!  It’s always hard starting up with writing again after a long hiatus, and you have given me more inspiration to consistently write.  Again, thank you.

Over the past few months that I have been MIA, I’ve actually been quite busy with life. I thought I’d share some updates with you as to what I’ve been up to so you get a little glimpse into my life.

• 5/20/17- Harrisburg Comic-Con: So, as an early wedding gift for my then-fiancé Kyle, I purchased tickets from a comic con in Harrisburg, PA.  This was only Harrisburg’s second year for doing a con, so it really wasn’t anything spectacular, but I wanted to go for the sake of getting photo ops with both David Ramsey and Matt Letscher who were two scheduled guests making appearances.  For more explanation as to who these actors are, David Ramsey plays John Diggle on Arrow, and Matt Letscher plays the Reverse Flash on The Flash.  Both of the panels were extraordinary.  David Ramsay’s panel was filled with non-stop laughter and Matt Letscher’s (who teamed up Michelle Harrison who plays Barry’s mom on the show) gave hints to the season finale.  Funnily enough, since this was my first con, I didn’t realize that when purchasing photo op tickets, you can have between two and four people in the photo per ticket.  I accidentally bought two photos per actor (aka four photos altogether), and even though I wasted more money than I should have, the results of the photo ops were incredible.   Oh, and one even blew up on Twitter!  Honestly, it was just a great experience, and I’d love to go back next year if they have other amazing guest stars in attendance.
• 6/3/17- I GOT MARRIED: What an incredibly amazing day.  I’m not sure that all of you know this, but I got engaged in May 2015 to my best friend, Kyle.  We had always planned on waiting two years to get married (i.e. to save money), so we planned our wedding for June 3, 2017.  It is insane how much planning goes into a wedding just to have that wedding fly by in a blink of an eye.  Co-workers, friends and loved ones joked with me prior to the big day saying that it was going to go by so quickly that I wasn’t even going to remember half of it.  I laughed with them, thinking they were wrong but boy were they right!!  I can’t even tell you much about what happened at my wedding, but I do remember a few details.  One, I completely forgot to wear my veil.  I didn’t notice until someone asked me about it after the ceremony as over.  Two, I wasn’t aware that in a Catholic wedding there are two times you are supposed to kiss your spouse.  I totally missed kissing Kyle the first time by giving him my cheek to kiss instead, resulting in both of us and our guests to burst out into laughter.  Three, we cut the wrong part of the cake at the reception (the top tier instead of the bottom).  Four, I was so dehydrated that I didn’t have one sip of alcohol (minus the toast)- I just chugged water.  Five, Kyle almost passed out several times because he hardly ate or drank anything the whole night.  Six, when we got back to the hotel, all we cared about was eating.  We had Wendy’s at 12:30 a.m. with my sister and brother-in-law.  Overall, it was an incredible day with silly little mishaps that just make me love it even more.  I hope you enjoy these pictures!

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• 6/4/17-6/10/17 Honeymooned in Myrtle: Our honeymoon in Myrtle was amazing.  We stayed at the Myrtle Beach Five Season Resort in the south Myrtle.  We went mini-golfing (I’m undefeated against Kyle for 4 years now), swimming in the ocean, running on the beach, exploring the boardwalk, adventuring at a water park, etc.  We saw Wonder Woman at a movie theater that allowed us to bring Coldstone in.  But there’s so much that we still want to do!  We already booked our anniversary trip for next year and we couldn’t be more excited!
  

  

  
• 6/17/17 Awesome Con: So this was never a part of our plan, but literally the weekend after we got back from our honeymoon, my sister texted me saying for her birthday they were going to Awesome Con in DC.  Kyle and I couldn’t say no, especially because David Tennant and John Barrowman were going to be there!  My sister lived in NOVA, so we drove to a metro station, hopped on a train, and got there around 10:30 a.m.  The line was outrageous and the crowds even more so once we got indoors.  Sadly, Tennant’s photo op was sold out and we got into the venue too late so we missed his panel.  But we did get a picture with John Barrowman (I only bought one photo this time!) and that was incredible.  Towards the end of the day, however, we did get to see David Tennant from afar, and Kyle got to meet some of the voice actors for Dragon Ball Super and My Hero Academia.  Despite the lines and the crowds, it was a great day.  (Side note: I don’t think I’d survive at San Diego.)
• 7/8/17 Wedding in Bethany: Bethany, West Virginia holds such a wonderful place in my heart.  Bethany College is my alma mater, and it’s also where I met Kyle.  We got to travel back only a month after our wedding to celebrate with friends of ours at their wedding.  Bethany weather has such a big reputation for being strange (i.e. hailed at my graduation in 2014, thunder-stormed at Kyle’s in 2015), and this day was no exception.  It was gloomy all morning and eventually started drizzling just prior to the ceremony.  By the end of the ceremony, the temperature rose at least 10 degrees and the sun was beating down on all of us.  It was definitely nice catching up with our friends, as well as the other guests sitting at our assigned table who we had never met/don’t get to talk to that often.
• 8/11/17-8/13/17 Delaware Beach Trip: Kyle’s aunt lives in Delaware, so we attempt to make a beach trip, even just for a weekend, each summer to visit her and her partner.  This trip was more fun than past year’s trips because Kyle’s mom was finally able to come along.  We celebrated both Kyle’s Aunt Marty’s birthday, as well as his mom Nancy’s birthdays while we were down there.  One evening, we went to the boardwalk and played in an arcade for probably almost an hour.  We didn’t realize so many quarters equaled so many turns in skeeball and before you knew it, we were playing skeeball for at least 20 minutes.  Kyle, Kyle’s brother Alex and I all walked away with small nerf guns as prizes after trading in our tickets.  One thing you should know about Kyle and Alex is that they love playing jokes on people.  Kyle had the brilliant idea to use the nerf guns against Marty once we got home from the boardwalk, and that’s just what we did.  The next morning, Kyle woke his mom up by saying there was a fire, woke Marty up by holding a stool over her head jokingly, and I woke up Alex by running and jumping on him.  It was a great time.
• 9/2/17-9/3/17 Moving Alex to college: Kyle’s little brother is finally in college!  He is attending Pace University in New York City for theater set design and he absolutely loves it so far.  Moving him up to college was a challenge, though.  1. Kyle and I drove up separately from his mom, dad, and brother.  We drove up Friday night right after work and we got into the city with no problems just after 9:00 p.m.  By the time we got to the hotel, it was 45 minutes and an anxiety attack later.  I hate driving in big cities, but New York is on another level.  We almost got hit by a taxi and it was impossible to turn left onto the street with the hotel because of a fire blocking off three roads.  In short, it was a mess, but we somehow, finally, made it there.  2. Alex and his mom were at a Broadway show when we arrived, so we just hung out in the hotel room until they got back.  Alex talked our ears off about the show and then said he was leaving but he’d be back later.  Fast forward to 45 minutes later when I woke up in a panic and Alex wasn’t back yet.  I texted him asking him where he was, in which he responded Times Square by himself.  I yelled at him through the messages saying that he was never allowed to go there by himself in the middle of the night (by this point it was close to 1:00 a.m.) just to find out he was in his mom’s room all along.  I told you Kyle and Alex like to play jokes.  Anyway, I told my in-laws and Kyle that I’m never having kids because Alex stressed me out too much.  The rest of the weekend went smoothly.  We all ate breakfast together before helping Alex move into his dorm, and after lunch, we grabbed our car from a parking garage and headed home.
• 9/15/17-9/17/17 Birthday Celebrations: I turned 25 this year, and boy do I feel like it.  I have aches and pains like I’m 25 going on 80.  However, the weekend of my birthday was so much fun.  I ate dinner at a restaurant called Black N Bleu, where I had the firehouse pasta that was to die for.  I received Kyle’s gift that night, too.  So, you all know the trending facebook videos of the people in the t-rex costumes doing ridiculous things?  I am now the proud owner of one!  I told Kyle I want to go running around the neighborhood around Halloween with it on to see everyone’s reactions.  The following day, we went for a morning hike with some friends, following Kyle accidentally hitting a curb and popping his tire.  After hiking, he went and got that fixed and we relaxed all afternoon until dinner with family at Chili’s (their chips and salsa, in my opinion, is out of this world).  Later, we met up with friends at a local winery and had a few drinks and chatted about life and Game of Thrones, which we marathoned on Sunday.
• 9/23/17-9/24/17 Love Celebrations: My brother and his fiance got engaged back in May, and this weekend we celebrated with them.  Kyle is one of my brother’s groomsmen and he and the rest of the groomsmen went to a place called “Top Golf” which is essentially a driving range but you get points each time you hit a golf ball.  The girls, my sister included, hung out at his fiance’s house as we drank good wine and talked everything wedding.  It ended with the guys meeting up with the girls at my future sister-in-law’s place and we ended the night playing Jenga.

Let me know in the comments below about any funny wedding mishaps that happened at your wedding or a wedding you attended, your birthday celebrations or really anything else you’d like to share what happened to you over the past few months.

Until next time,

Emily

Thankful Tuesday: My job

My first Thankful Tuesday post was incredibly easy for me to come up with.  Over the past eight months, I’ve worked at a catering company as a server…definitely not the job I wanted coming out of college with a Communications degree.  But nonetheless, they were the first company who reached out to me after sending them my resume, so I figured I’d give it a shot until I found something better.  This job was only supposed to be temporary, but I found out that finding a job in my field was a lot harder than I previously thought.  I soon began taking a Ron Swanson view on life, as seen below:

I tried to stay positive and did everything I could to find something, even if it wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do. I sent my resume to numerous people, only to be ignored or denied by all of them because of one crucial thing I lacked: experience

How am I supposed to gain experience if no one will hire me?  I can’t be hired because I don’t have experience but in order to get experience I have to get hired.  It’s a catch-22. I spent many days trying to figure out a new approach.  I actually found an internship with a company that was all online, along with freelance writing.  Now I did both of those for two months or more, and I figured they would help me land some jobs in my career.

I was definitely wrong again.  So then I discussed with family members and other people that I’m close to about some different approaches I could take now that my second idea wasn’t working.  They helped me realize that maybe going through a staffing agency to find work would be a better idea, and to keep an open mind with any position that may come up.

A few days after I applied for the staffing agency, I interviewed with them and they took me on as a client.  Only a few days later did I find my dream job.  Communications coordinator.  I thought I had a great shot at this position, despite being so young and only having my experience from school to represent my abilities.  Unfortunately, I found out that they chose someone else for the position after I felt like I had a very successful interview with them.

David Tennant is me. I am David Tennant. Or I was when I found out the news about not getting the communications coordinator job.  I just felt like I would’ve been perfect for said job, but my lack of experience is what killed my chances.  But the staffing agency continued to call me about jobs while I was waiting to hear back and actually the day before hearing that I didn’t get the communications coordinator job, I went on an interview at a law firm for a transcriptionist position.  So basically my job will be typing.

But at least it’s at a law firm, right?  I’ve heard that graduates with law degrees can’t even get into law firms.  Plus I’ve always been interested in law; I’ve just never practiced it/took classes (except for one) for it because I’ve always loved Communications more.  Regardless, went to my interview looking pretty snazzy and feeling confident in my abilities to type and work well with others, and apparently I nailed it!  The very next day I got offered the position.

So once again, it isn’t exactly where I want to be and it’s not the greatest salary in the world, but it’s definitely over minimum wage and I’ll be able to save up money by working there.  Also after 3 months I have a good opportunity to get a raise because the first three months I’m technically working under the staffing agency and if the law firm likes me/I do everything well, I’ll get hired officially and probably get a pay raise.  (Companies only pay staffing agencies so much for clients so the law firm will most likely pay me more once they hire me directly under them in 3 months…which they already said they would do.)  I liked the people who I met with and I’m sure I’ll get along with everyone else in the law firm.  I’m very excited and thankful for this opportunity.  I’ll have normal working hours (as opposed to the catering job) that will help me structure my days better and get the most done.  Also I’m kind of excited to just dress up every day!

But lately I’ve been thinking about how things could’ve been much worse during these past several months of trying to find a job suited for me.  I’m thankful to even have had a job, which is more than what some college graduates can say.  I’m also thankful that I saved up enough money while working at the catering company to be comfortable in paying off my student loans since December and never having to ask my parents for money.  I’m very thankful for being able to get everyone in my family and my boyfriend’s immediate family Christmas gifts, especially since this was the first year I was able to do that.  And now I’m thankful for getting a new opportunity at a great law firm where I’ll be able to save even more money and not have to live paycheck to paycheck.

It can only go up from here.