Special birthday wishes today to Sammy Phillips, auntie Diane tomorrow and of course dad on his "I'm getting pretty old" year birthday:) Hope you all have great celebrations indeed!What can I say, but work has been wonderfully busy as usual. We're on the doorstep of performance appraisal season, but I guess that doesn't mean that the other work will slow down. The execs are still in decision mode about the projects we've submitted, but heard that the business plans we spent so much time on went over quite well.
We've got some new SIFErs that have come into the company over the last few weeks, hard to believe that I'm their senior by three years now! Another exciting event occurred when an interesting job profile crossed my desk a few weeks ago, so I applied for a marketing project coordinator position reporting directly to our Chief Marketing Officer. I've gone through four interviews now, even one with the CMO which was quite different I must say, but fun nonetheless! I think it'd be a great opportunity, so we'll see if I made the cut over the next week or so.Jenny and I went back home a few weeks ago for a couple weddings as well as some time with the fam. Just wanted to say congrats to Rabbit and Katie on their wedding, it was a wondermously good time. 
Fun times were had with the fam as well, even though I had to beat Becca in a Capri Sun chugging contest. I've become pretty good at that, I'm thinking of going pro!
Fun times were had with the fam as well, even though I had to beat Becca in a Capri Sun chugging contest. I've become pretty good at that, I'm thinking of going pro!
I also took Jenny up for the lasties of her birthday week to see Jack Johnson in concert at the Lakewood Ampitheatre. As you can tell by the glistening, we got a little wet. Ok, we got soaked, but were there with great friends and listened to some amazing live music. While up there I went to class as well and in a matter of 3 weeks, I've pretty much hammered out an entire course in Entrepreneurship. We presented our final business plan yesterday and our write-up is due Tuesday, then it is on to the fall semester with Integrated Marketing Communications and Negotiations ... less than a year left, yahoo!
Had quite a bit of fun on the soccer pitch as well. A few weeks ago we had Brandi Chastain sports bra night and we capped off the regular season with a win for Yo Momma to take us into the semis. We decided to go with Breast Cancer Awareness night, so we all donned the pink shirts, v-neck of course, for a victory into the finals where the team pulled off an upset W to win the summer league ship, what a great feeling!
Last week also marked our 2nd Annual Columbus Heroes Read event where over 100 students came to interact with local heroes, pick up free comic books, draw their own superheroes and just have a good time. It was a great event for the Literacy Alliance indeed. Couple weeks ago I also had a great chance to go speak with some amazing volunteers. I was asked to come and talk on the importance of motivating your volunteers and how to attract/retain them in the long haul. I spoke on Getting your ACT together, which was of course an acronym for Ask-Challenge-Thank. It went over quite well, but I am more excited for the speakers at the Jimmy Blanchard Leadership Forum. Aflac invited me to attend and tomorrow night Laura Bush kicks off the festivities before the full day on Tuesday, which includes one of my new favorite authors Malcolm Gladwell. Should be a great event which I am truly looking forward to!!
Welp, off to bed, but hope you all have sweet dreams and don't let the bed bugs bite. Happy birthday again dad and can't wait to see you in a couple months.Alwayz,
Nate
Work has continued with the craziness over the last week as business planning wraps up and execution continues on. I've had some good time to sit down with team members over the last week and chat about their performance over the last few months and see how I can help them where they need to be moving forward, which is always the most rewarding part of the job. Additionally though, a position in the Marketing department opened up - Project Coordinator. Basically, this position would be similar to what I am doing now managing projects, just without direct reports and the projects are on a much larger scale with bigger execs:) It sounds like a fantacular job, so I put my name in the hat and got into the round of interviews of which there are four ... wow! Two down, and two to go ... one with our Chief Marketing Officer in a week or so. I'm in a great place where I love what I do, but also realize that in order to grow, I have to break out of my shell a bit and that would be what this job is all about, so, we'll see.
Emory is wrapping up the Summer semester this week as I just turned in my last paper for Social Enterprise, my independent study course. I've learned and enjoyed this one the most of them all because I've truly been able to apply what I've learned and feel I've taken away a great deal of new knowledge. Saturday marks the start of my August course, Entrepreneurship, which should be a blast.
Soccer has been going great over the last week with team Yo Momma. We currently sit in the middle of the pack of the third tier league, but last Tuesday we strapped on the big boy pants and took down the only undefeated team in our league. O ya, and Jenny scored the game-winning goal off I throw in I had to her. You could tell she'd never scored before in her life, because her celebration was priceless. Then tonight we played a friendly against the #1 ranked team in the league above us, whom also was undefeated ... until tonight! We planned Brandy Chastain night where everyone, including the dudes, wore a sports bra in honor of the famous Brandy Chastain goal celebration. After our first goal of the evening, we all ran over to the sideline and de-shirted for a team picture, instant classic.
Everything from CDs/DVDs to clothes and books were enjoyed. Then her actual birthday came and Jenny started the morning off with muffins in bed followed by the gift of guitar lessons from Caden and Jack Johnson concert tickets from me, as you can see ... surpriseness came upon her!
Friday night the celebration continued downtown with some dancing and good fun. This was followed by a weekend trip to Atlanta with about ten folks for some fun at the mall, by the pool and the Braves game. It was great good fun at the game where the Braves won and Sara Evans came around afterwards for a free performance. We stayed the night up in Atlanta and had a relaxing day at Lenox Mall before coming back to C-Town.
Although this was a fun weekend, we're both looking forward to some time back home this weekend in Iowa. Can't wait for Rabbit's wedding and some time with family/friends. Hope everyone has a great week and all is well, catch you on the flip side.