How To Make a Lasting Impression on Your Boss - RaeLo Style

Sometimes I surprise even myself with the amazingly classy, smooth moments I create for myself.

For example, last week at work (around 9:30am), I got out my make-me-breathe-happy pills so I could take them with my food, per doctor's orders. Well, for some reason when I opened my pill bottle, pills decided to jump out... all. over. the. place. In my haste to retrieve them, two rolled onto the floor into the black abyss that is under my cubicle walls.

Now, these are small pills... and they aren't really the kind that you can just let fall on the ground and not take. No. Every pill must be taken. Or else my adrenal glands could just shut down, which would then, of course, lead to my slow, painful, imminent death (or something like that). So when a pill falls, you find it. No matter the cost.

One pill was easy to find, no hassle there. The other was an elusive little thing. After recruiting the dudes that sit to the left and front of me and searching for five minutes under our desks, one dude exclaimed, "Hey, I think I found...yep...I definitely found it!" But alas, he could not reach it.

Where was it you ask? Oh, just in between the cubicle walls of dude to the left's desk and MY BOSS' desk.

So what did I do? Well, naturally, I crawled, on my knees, under my boss' desk (he wasn't in to work yet that morning), head first, and searched as the dude on the other side tried pushing the pill toward me.

Next thing I knew, an ominous shadow had descended upon me, and I heard a muffled and slightly confused, "Um, hi..."

And that was when I realized that my boss had finally come into work. And that he had been most graciously welcomed by my impressive butt poking out from under his desk... probably aimed right at his face, knowing my luck.

Here's what I imagine the scene probably looked like...

I returned his "Hi" with a bounty of loud, slightly awkward, laughs - the kind of laughs you make when something is just too perfectly set up to not laugh heartily at, but that are coupled with a tinge of regret and a sarcastic, "Of course this would happen to me," and made the slow crawl of shame out from under his desk, pill in hand, attempting vainly to explain that I wasn't creeping under his desk, I was just trying to find my drugs...

I'm sure I looked right up there with the pain-killer addicts. The only thing that could have made it better would have been if I had ratted hair, chapped lips, my shaky hands, and wild eyes. Well, the wild eyes I probably did have, let's just be honest.

But regardless, I probably made a lasting impression that day. True job security right there.

What Halloween Means to Me

Okay people, let's talk about Halloween.

I LOVE Halloween. Not because it means I get to justify eating exorbitant amounts of candy (Tootsie Rolls, I love you), not because I Trick-or-Treat (can't even remember the last time I did that), not because I have kids that Trick-or-Treat, and not because Halloween is apparently a great excuse to dress like a skank and go party-hopping (or so I hear). No. Actually I love it for everything I get to do leading up to it.

I love it because I don't believe in buying pre-made costumes, so I always get to be creative and make my own. I love it because I get to do what I do best, which is go completely crazy with decorating and details. I never feel so "in my element" as I do  when I'm designing an idea and then finding a way to make it come to life. I also really enjoy coming up with costume ideas for other people and then helping them make their costumes totally awesome. Halloween is the time of year when you can take a temporary step outside of the responsible life of the "daily grind," which for me is the corporate world, and be like a kid again - excited and innovative.

This year, I went a little more crazy than usual. In February I was at our local Ross with Jayni and happened upon a pair of red sparkle-heels for $8. They only had them in Jayni's size. Jayni is a singer, a sweetheart, and a brunette. It was clear to me then that she NEEDED to be Dorothy for Halloween. She agreed. And that gave me a fantastic reason to be Glinda the Good Witch, because anytime I can dress up as something that involves fun, glittery make-up, you know I'm going to do it.


After more $$ than I care to admit, what felt like 20+ (wo)man hours, 3 tubes of puff paint, and hand-gluing thousands of individual gemstones, I (with some help from Jayni, the seamstress) had created this:

The crown in the works.

Finally completed.

Our friend, Smoker Glinda, Jayni as Dorothy (she made her costume too), and Nice Glinda.

Smoker Glinda liked to stand by me and say things like "You Whore." So hilarious. 

One of the things I love about the company I work at is that we get way into Halloween. We always have a Halloween party where all 250+ employees bring their kids to Trick-or-Treat. This year, every department was given a budget to decorate a conference room. And I don't mean some spider webs and streamers. I mean we had full-on, amazing rooms. One department had a yellow brick road leading to the Emerald City, A Charlie and the Chocolate Factory room that looked AMAZING, a Zombie Apocalypse Price Is Right room, a Hotel Transylvania haunted house, and our department (and by department I mean me and one other girl with sporadic help here and there) turned our room into... The Batcave. Yes, it was my idea and vision. And I am SO pleased with how it turned out:

We crinkled black butcher paper and taped it to the wall to give it the "cave effect."

The entrance to the cave.

Inside the cave, with black lights, glow-in-the-dark hanging bats and glow-in-the-dark spider webs.

Our video production team made a cool Batman video with great Batman theme music.

And of course, a "bat signal."

Commissioner Gordon & Twoface.

Penguin & Twoface (I painted Twoface's face, and he won an award for Best Make-Up).

Other Halloween costumes I've done:

2011: A coworker was Darth Maul. I did the face paint... with only a napkin as a utensil.

2005: The Riddler. The roommates and I did Batman theme, obviously. 

2011: Padme. The whole Marketing dept. did Star Wars theme. 

2009: Tinkerbell. This year I actually spent more time making the Queen of Hearts costume for my friend Kathryn than I did on my own costume. I even did her hair and make-up.

2007: Water. I guess I was feeling more abstract that year. 

2010: Hermione Granger. Made the tie, made the wand, made the Gryffindor badge.

And I can't find any pictures of 2006 when I was Betty Rubble. But if I do find one, I'll be sure to post it. Anywho... there ya go. Halloween is totally my thing. And I had a great one this year. Hope you did too!

This Is How I Do

Most of you have probably already seen this on Facebook, but I wanted to share it here too so that I have a place to keep it. As many of you know, I recently received a nice promotion at my job to Content Marketing Manager. My first project in my new role was to be the content manager for a new website our company needed to build. A lot of collaboration went into this project and I had a lot of support and "brainstorming meetings" with my coworkers to make this happen, but I'm very proud of the work I did (though not perfect - there are still changes/edits to be made). So, if you want to, check out the site. Pretty much, if it's a word and you can read it and it's on this site, there's a 95% chance it was written by me. Unless it's lame - then my coworker, Branden, probably wrote it. (Just Kidding...)

Here's the link: http://marketing.attask.com/

Whilst working on this project the last two months, I also helped create all of the web offers for the site (demo videos, teaser videos, infographics, posters, etc.). Here's one of the videos that I wrote the script for:



So basically, if anyone was ever wondering what in the world I do all day, this is it.

Okay, that's all.

Boondocks

Here's a few pictures from my weekend:

Boondocks Arcade... I won, of course.

Waiting in line for the go carts. It was toasty out there!

On Friday my work had a "family party" at Boondocks Family Fun Center in Draper, UT. I didn't have a family to bring, so I brought Chad instead. We had fun with our all-access passes, free food, and 20 free tokens each for the arcade. It was like being a kid again. We went on the go carts twice... the second time we had the brilliant idea to sit together in the same cart. Let's just say that was, uh, a leetle snug. But hilarious. We laughed the entire time. I then proceeded to beat Chad at the basketball hoops, skeeball (sp?), air hockey, and numerous other racing games. Ok, he won a few times, but I was the overall champion.

Chad got interrogated by all of the coworkers I have that spend too much time being interested in my dating life, but overall, we had a lot of fun. One thing I really like about Chad is that he is fun... he's goofy and weird (in a cute way) and always knows what to do to make me laugh. He doesn't take himself too seriously, which makes it a lot easier for me to be my goofy, nerdy self. Besides, he thinks I'm funny, so... it works.

It's Like Christmas in July!

I know, I know... three posts in one day? It's like the feast after the famine... it's like the best thing that's happened to you in forever.

Okay, maybe not, but still... pretty good for me, right?

I just thought I should put up a few pics of the last two weekends before it gets so far out that I forget or just find that the moment has passed.

At a work BBQ July 15th. That's my new coworker, Kristyn.

July 16th. Dinner with Chad's friends at Texas Roadhouse.

Sometimes we make weird faces... Harry Potter 7.2 July 15th

At a false alarm Pioneer Day fireworks show in SLC. July 23rd.

Ok, that's all. As you were.

Achy Leg Syndrome (ALS)

My whole life I've had this weird thing that I now refer to as ALS, or "Achy Leg Syndrome". Basically, my legs would start aching - usually late at night, but sometimes during the day as well - every once and a while and the only way to help the situation was to have someone rub my legs for me, take a crap ton of ibuprofen, or soak in a hot bath and go to bed. The pain is immense. And annoying. In fact, when I was a little, little girl, I used to wake up in the middle night crying in pain and my dad would have to come rub my legs until I went back to sleep. I always thought that what I was experiencing was growing pains. And when I thought it was growing pains it was easier to bear since I have always been a little on the shorter side and longed to be just one more inch taller. (5'6"? Come on universe!)

But when the pains continued sporadically into my adulthood (yes, I'm almost 24 now and have been a college grad for a year and a half, so I'm now referring to myself as an "adult") I started to think that perhaps these weren't actually growing pains as I had previously figured. So I started to notice that the trend was that my legs would start aching when I was overly exhausted (is that redundant?). 

The funny thing is that this weekend I was hanging out with my little brother (more on this in a minute) and he mentioned that his legs start hurting when he's really tired. I was like WHAT?! ME TOO! How funny that ALS runs in the family. It must be some kind of genetic mutation or something (cue X-men theme music).

Okay okay, so the point of this story is that yesterday, after work, I got ALS. Which wasn't cool because I still had a LONG night ahead of me. But man, OF COURSE I'm exhausted. Saturday night when I was with my brother he mentioned having a pain in his right side. At first we thought he pulled a muscle or maybe even hurt a rib. But as the night progressed, so did his pain, until he was writhing on my couch, red faced and sweating and unable to sit comfortably. It was at this point that I decided it was time to make a visit to the ER. We got there at 11pm, we left at 4am. And after an x-ray, some needles, and an ultrasound (I now tell my brother that I know him inside and out), the doctor said I'm not sure what's causing the pain or why it's getting worse, but take some anti-inflammatories and if it doesn't get better in 5 days come back. I could have punched that doctor. But I was tired to even function so we just left.

The next day I had church at 9am. I have a new calling in church that requires me to spend more time there than I usually would, so I got about 4 hours of sleep and then spent the majority of my day at church in various meetings. Only to wake up the next day at 6:45am and work until 5pm (which, it's the end of the quarter and I don't get my bonus if I don't meet all of my quarterly objectives AND I'm leaving for California Thursday evening so I have a short work week in which to get everything finished PLUS I have to prepare a lot of things for when I get back into work the following week), had to run some errands for church and for the weekend after work, then rushed to scarf down some food and headed back over to church for FHE (which lasted WAY too long - somebody please tell me why some people think that FHE needs to be some kind of epic excursion?), had a meeting afterward, and then another meeting after that, which meant spending the rest of the night (until 10:30pm) planning and organizing and etc. etc. etc. Only to wake up this morning at 7am wondering where in the world I was and what was happening, then rushing to get ready for work in 20 mins and gearing up for another full day of busy work and another night full of meetings.

So yes, I'm completely and utterly exhausted (hence the ALS) and I don't see an end to that in the near future. I have busy days at work today, tomorrow, and thursday, I have to pack at some point tomorrow, and then I'm not getting in to California until late on Thursday night, for a full morning of helping my parents paint and unpack (they just moved into a new house that I'm super excited to see!), an evening full of family, and then a weekend full of more painting and unpacking. Somewhere in there we'll go to church, somewhere in there we'll celebrate the 4th of July, and then I'll fly back late Tuesday night and have to wake up early the next day for another full week of work.

The last time I washed my hair was Saturday. Somebody please remind me to shower sometime soon and make sure that I'm eating all my meals.

Thanks.

When the Guys are Away...

The girls will play (or at least, pretend to).

This week, my boss, my other boss, and the coworker in the cube next to me are in London on "business." Do you know what I would give to be in London on "business" right now? A lot. Especially if my company was covering the expenses.

So, all that's left in my row of cubicles are myself and two other girls that just happen to be around my age. This morning we got the brilliant idea that we should make it look like we're not working at all whilst they're out on "holiday," so we staged some funny pictures really quick to send to our coworkers via Twitter, you know, to make them "jealous" (and then, of course, we got back to work).

Just, you know, catching up on the latest.

There's no better time to paint your toe-nails, right?

Lounging on the lovesacs.

And somehow, I managed to be productive today. Go figure.