I have been hiding something for a while now. But now that I’m moved in, have made it official on my other social networks, it seems silly not to talk about it here.

This could have been something that appeared on my 30 Before 30 list, as it ended up being one of the most significant things that happened in 2010, but it did not make the list. For two reasons: 1) It wasn’t a goal I knew I had or had wanted set for myself at the time of that list creation and 2) Once I reveal what it is, you’ll see why it couldn’t be made public: I got a new job.

I had been at the Boston Convention Marketing Center for almost 5 years (I’m a couple months shy). I came in with a mere 5 years marketing experience under my belt, busted my ass, moved my way up, fought to manage a number of projects, and have sparked the ideas for a whole bunch more.

A few months ago, I realized in my time there, I worked on every major project a person in my shoes could ever hope to: redesigning all collateral, setting/maintaining branding guidelines, establishing a social media presence, and working on a complete redesign of a company website – to name a few. The website is the last project on this list. And it is set to launch in the next few months.

So when I made the realization that I’ve worked on all these amazing projects, it also made me realize that they’ve been completed. I’ve contributed and learned a lot, but I also became scared that because those projects are done with no major new ones in the pipeline, I wouldn’t have any more to contribute or work on or add or, most importantly, LEARN.

Conveniently right around the time I realized this, an opportunity presented itself that I just had to go for. I have never experienced a job interview process like this before. Months of interviews, scads of people to interview with, knowing that I was up against the best – in the most unexaggerated way. In a global report of business schools, my new employer was ranked #1 in North America. According to a colleague something like less than 3% of outside job candidates are hired. This same colleague was told (and passed on to me) that it is harder to get a job at this school than it is to get into this school. I’m not sure if any of this is true, but it can seem that way!

I can absolutely and without hesitation say that signing that offer letter was one of my proudest moments of 2010. With regards to my career, it is my biggest and most proud step forward. Not just because I now have a new job, but because I recognized that I needed to move on, and that all of my education (both in the classroom and in various jobs) have put me in a position to be offered and accept the job I just did.

My new position has already proved to be the right decision. I’m working with a smart, vibrant, collaborative team who have welcomed me with open arms. I’ve already been introduced to projects that I can’t wait to get my hands on. I’ve already been able to pull from my last job, my working knowledge of Interactive Marketing and even put my design skills to use. My work here will be a lot different than anything I’ve been used to – and I’m glad.

I do think that this job – both the time committment as well as everything I am exposed to here – will have an effect on this blog. I’ve been thinking about changing the format for some time. I’m no longer in a position to contribute to a personal blog every day during the week – and to be honest, I haven’t been committed to sharing that way in some time. Partly because I’d like to keep more of my life offline (my work life is online – I need to keep a balance) and partly because I’ve become far more interested in sharing valuable stuff rather than half-heartedly throwing together some pics just becuase I haven’t posted in a week.

What is this “stuff”? I’m not entirely sure yet.

I’ve been reading and bookmarking hundreds of amazing articles that I’m not quite sure what to do with or who to share them with. This might be a good place? I’ve also become seriously committed to organizing and accomplishing all kinds of goals – big goals, small goals, personal goals, career goals, financial goals. Could I eliminate all the fluff posts and use this as an outlet to keep a running tally and share what I learn along the way? Perhaps. But either way, you do have my word: I am not going to stop blogging all together. It’s part of who I am – both personally and professionally. I’ll just figure out what it means for this space as I go.

For now, I have this new job to keep me pretty occupied.

With that being said, I’d love to know what YOUR most proud moment was of 2010. I don’t care WHAT it is or how big or small of an accomplishment it may have been. Tell me in the comments, inspire me.

* I finished my Christmas shopping. For real. I officially finished last night. WOO-HOO!
* But that does not mean I’m DONE. My boyfriend and I are making each other’s gifts and I’m only partway through that.
* No I will not tell you what it is. He reads this.
* I will say it is awesome though.
* Bring it, Eric!
* I got a haircut last week. I hate it.
* I colored my own hair the week prior.
* That looks awesome.
* I went dark brown with golden highlights.
* My (former) stylist asked where I had it done.
* I win.
* I am THISCLOSE to finishing 4 more items on my 30 Before 30 list.
* Those 4 will be finished before I actually turn 30.
* Another 3 are in progress, but are unfortunately ongoing and probably won’t be completed by my birthday, but certainly will be in the first quarter of the new year!
* I’m pleased as punch with my progress.
* So much so, that I’m working on a new list for 2011.
* Stay tuned!

“Girl hair glasses and bangs” or any combination of those words.

Things you will find: a whole new stash of porn.

Things you will not find: the haircuts you’re looking for. Well, unless you want the Bieb:

I can not sleep tonight. I don’t think my entries have time stamps on them, but I can tell you it is 4:46 am right now. Short of downing some sleeping pills, I have tried everything (cleaning, watching a movie, listening to music, listening to This American Life, laying in my bed in the dark for two hours). I finally gave up and came over here.

Good story, huh?

While I was looking for a movie to watch earlier, I scanned through my “Recently Watched” in my Netflix queue and figured, since it’s October and all, I might as well do a Halloween movie round-up. In no particular order, here is a list of all the awesome scary, gory, stupid movies I’ve watched in the past few weeks that you should too! Get in the Halloween spirit! (And do not judge me!):

Let Me In. Figured I’d start with a newbie. This movie is amazing and also insanely beautiful. Go see it. You will love it. It stars Chloe Moretz who you will recognize from the also amazing but totally NOT scary Kickass. I can not believe this girl is 13 – she is an incredible actress. (Also this movie is based off the Swedish Let the Right One In. See it after and compare.)

Paranormal Activity. Say what you will about it, but I almost cried the first time I watched this. My boyfriend made me watch it with all the lights out. I have had a fear of demons creepin’ in my bedroom ever since. (Have I ever mentioned that I usually sleep with my light on? IT’S BECAUSE I LOVE/TORTURE MYSELF WITH MOVIES LIKE THIS. I’ve watched PA three times in the past week.)

The Descent. Holy crap is this movie scary. AND AWESOME. If you haven’t seen it/heard of it – RENT IT. RENT IT NOW. Add it to your Netflix. Be prepared to sleep with YOUR light on. And feel sliiiiiightly claustrophobic.

28 Days Later. Zombie goodness! Also the soundtrack features (a heavily edited) East Hastings from the band Godspeed You! Black Emperor. It’s awesome.

Honorable mention: Zombieland. Fine it’s not scary – but it is still pretty rad. Plus I love Woody Harrelson (cause I look like him???? Seriously. The resemblance can be uncanny in the right light. Sad face. OR AWESOME FACE).

The House of the Devil. When I hit play on this movie from my instant Netflix queue I thought it was a movie made in the 80s … because that’s when it takes place. This movie came out in 2009. It is everything a 80s horror movie should be. Ti West NAILED it.

The Exorcist. An oldie but goodie. And that upside down crab walk thing down the stairs? MAKES ME SCREAM EVERY TIME.

The Last Exorcism. I saw this in the theatre, I think it was the last showing of the evening, right at the end of it’s run in the movie theatres – so the theatre was completely EMPTY. Except for me, my boyfriend and one other couple. This was the most AMAZING way to ever see a horror movie. And the movie itself was AWESOME. Except for the very last scene. Could have skipped that. WAH.

Um some others (horror, zombie, silly, scary as all f*ck) that I haven’t seen in a while and still love: The Ring, Pet Cemetery, Rosemary’s Baby, Rebecca, Evil Dead (of course), Shaun of the Dead, … seriously, I could go on and on and on and really shouldn’t at 5 am on a school night.

Here is one tip: do not see Paranormal Entity. As you may have guessed, it’s a Paranormal Activity rip-off that is SO, SO, SO bad? It could almost work better as a comedy. Except … it’s really just too bad.

On a side note: Why did I think it would be a good idea, on a night I can not sleep, to google every horror movie that has freaked me out in the past few weeks? Sometimes I doubt how smart I am. And this is one of those times.

I’ve been a huge fan of Dan Savage from the moment I found out who he was – I read his book “The Kid” when it came out. I fell in love with him again when I heard him as contributor in some episode of This American Life years back. And then I became addicted to his podcast The Savage Lovecast. (Young readers, this podcast is very informative, but very explicit.)

In podcast 205, Dan announced a You Tube project he launched called “It Gets Better”.

From Mashable.com:

The channel was created after Indiana teenager Billy Lucas committed suicide in response to bullying from his classmates, who assaulted him with epithets and told him to go home and kill himself because he was gay.

Each video will feature a role model sharing personal experiences that illustrate that life for gays and lesbians improves beyond high school. That’s a theme that has come up in Savage’s columns and podcasts with regularity. Gay teens have written or called Savage in distress, saying they feel isolated and discriminated against by their peers — especially in rural schools. Savage has generally responded that they just need to stay strong and hopeful because when they become adults they’ll have the option of moving to more progressive communities and joining more accepting social groups.

Since not every teenager facing these challenges is going to write in for advice, and since many rural schools don’t offer programs to support gay and lesbian teens, Savage launched the channel to reach more people in need of support.

I think this is an amazing project, and makes me love Dan Savage that much more. Pass around the link to the YouTube project and get the word out.

Dan and his husband Terry made the first video which you can see here:

I was clicking around Hulu looking for something to watch and noticed the Lifetime Movie Network offers several of their movies through the Hulu service. As a lover of all things ridiculous (Hello? Mother May I Sleep With Danger?), I clicked through to see what they had to offer and saw this:

click for larger view … or just scroll down

Close up of that description please?

More notably, the TAGS …

Directly compared to the rating for that program …

I don’t know what is more “reckless” – rating a XXX porn PG or falsely selling a PG movie as XXX porn.

I love you Lifetime.

Her name is Vienna ….

Here’s her glamour shot (although you’ll notice from my crappy iPhone pic that I added some matching high gloss fenders) …

After test driving bikes all day yesterday, I ended up going with a Specialized Globe Vienna 3. If you’re interested in her specs, check ‘em out here.

So far we have an amazing relationship …. I’ve been having the hardest time dragging myself away from her. Except now it’s way dark out and I guess I need to eat sometime. But I can’t wait for tomorrow.

I’m embarrassed to admit the last time I stepped into a hair salon. Mostly because I’m trying to grow my hair out and the first rule of growing hair out properly is regular trims to keep split ends in check. But also because I have done absolutely no maintenance on the absolutely gorgeous brown I had dyed my hair and it all washed out and/or was bleached out by the sun.

The last time I was in a salon? February 25th. It’s June. Sure the beginning of June, but February 25th was still, what? 14 weeks ago? (Yikes. I just looked at a calendar — it was EXACTLY 14 weeks ago. Like to the day.).

So on February 26th, my hair looked like this (with a reminder of what it looked like the day before):

And now, 14 weeks, several inches and some dirty dishwater looking color later …. I look like this:

Could I have snapped a WORSE looking picture? I think not. Seriously people ….

HALP.

I honestly have no IDEA what to do with my hair. I want to go brown again, but is it going to be gone the first time I step out into the sun? I love the length – and it took me WAY too long to grow this out to just cut it all off – but my hair has absolutely no hair STYLE to it. It just hangs. But because I really haven’t sported a long ‘do in … well basically my whole life (I’ve always been a shoulder length or shorter kind of gal) – I honestly don’t even know what my options are.

Things about my hair:
- It’s fine
- But I have A LOT of it
- This misleads people into thinking I have thicker hair than I actually do
- My hair is stick straight
- It will not hold a curl or wave
- I CAN curl it or make it wavy
- But whatever style I’ve tricked myself into thinking I can do, it will fall out within 20 minutes. Thirty if I’m lucky. Two hours if I use an entire can of hairspray.
- I have had bangs (blunt, sideswept, really I’ve run the full bang gamut)
- And like bangs (blunt, sideswept and everything in between)
- Would do bangs again
- But don’t necessarily need to
- Have no idea what to do with the rest of my hair – layers? Blunt cut?

HALP ME. I’m pretty much willing to try anything (except a perm. NO PERMS.)

Please send pics, k? Thanks!

So I’m going to buy a bike. I started thinking about it last summer while doing some volunteer work with Harbor to the Bay. I kept saying “I’m getting a bike. I’m getting a bike. I’m getting a bike.”

Well I’ll save you from the suspense of not knowing: No I never did end up getting a bike.

How about you help me? I’ll tell you what I want/need, and you give me suggestions of bikes (brands/styles/etc) to check out.

WANTS/NEEDS:
1.) Something I can take on bike paths and non-scary city streets. I’m not going to be doing anything Harbor to the Bay (Boston to Ptown) style. I’m not going to be racing. Ideally I’d like to take some rides on weekends, maybe do light grocery shopping and commute to work.

2.) Something that is sturdy and won’t fall apart. I’m kind of a klutz. And by kind of, I mean it’s one of my defining characteristics. I don’t mind investing a bit of money so long as it means I’ll be safe (from myself.) I don’t want to crumble the thing the first time I fall off it. Yes, I said first. Because there will be many.

3.) Something that is reasonably priced. I said I’d be willing to invest a bit of money. But again, I’m not doing crazy racing or insane bike trips. Let’s keep it in the $400 and lower range.

4.) Something that is conducive to mounting a back or front rack. Think small items: bag of groceries, work files, laptop maybe?

5.) Something preeeetttty. Shut up. I’m a girl. And a designer. I like pretty things.

That being said, I’ve done a bit of research and asking around and have been told a hybrid is likely a good fit for me. From what I’ve read that seems pretty right on.

Hybrids are almost as fast and easy to pedal as road bikes, while being almost as comfortable and versatile as mountain bikes. They’re great for commuting, errands, getting in shape and all-around fun.

I pulled up a few that I like (based only on reading specs and looking at photos of course. I haven’t test driven any of these yet.) and here’s what I’m eying right now:

So that’s all I’ve got so far. Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions? (Also let me just remind you again — I haven’t had the chance to ride any of these yet, so I could be basically making things up at this point.)

Step 1: Turn the volume all the way up on your work computer or laptop.

Step 2: Act as if you are working hard

Step 3: Unleash one of these babies on an unsuspecting victim who walks by:

Trust me, even the most stressed out coworker will stop, laugh and totally Price Is Right Fail Horn you back.

These work equally as well in meetings when someone comes up with a really terrible idea. Though I do suggest making sure your office has the same sick sense of humor that mine does.