Tuesday, May 29, 2007

North Carolina

I just got back from a really fun weekend in North Carolina. My cousin Brian was getting married, and since i looove weddings, I was all about this trip.. It took us about 1000 hours to drive down, but as soon as we got there i was ready to go out. Now, this was the first time i've been able to hang out with my cousins and be of legal drinking age, so i was more than ready for this trip. We get there and right away my cousin evan comes to pick me up and take me to the bar. We had a great night, i definitely got drunk and was able to catch up with my cousins and see what they've been up to the past few years. I spent the whole next day with my even older cousins who now have lots of little kids. We swam at the pool, hung out, and just caught up on everything. Later that night we had the rehearsal dinner. It started out as a great night everyone was eating and drinking, i finally got to meet the bride to be. I learned about a new drinking game called cornhole..... yeah only in the south will you find a game called cornhole. Anyways we drank we had fun it was a great time...... Come to find out the next morning that i had a lot more fun than i thought. Apparently we went out to the bar after the dinner and i thought i was in ny and was going to walk home.... yeah

Well, the wedding was beautiful... i had the greatest dress on!! i'm now home, back to work... Going to wildwood, nj in a couple of weeks and then to japan a couple weeks after that. i can't wait. it will definitely be good times all around~

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Adventures at the stip club

So when you first start dating someone what else is a better date to take them on than a strip club??? i know, i know, you're thinking.. ummmm who does that???????? Well... I DO! Yes my friends I went on a date to the strip club last night. It was quite the adventure and I had an amazing time. Did I scare the guy off? That is a very good possibility.

The thing is, I'm used to people knowing who I am.. I'm used to people see me do crazy things and act like a crazy person, to me its just normal. When you go out into the real world and act that way... people just don't get it. They don't get me and they don't get that its completely normal to me. I'm 22 years old and the way I see it, I have at least 3 years left to act however I want to act and do whatever I want to do. I know that technically you're an adult when you reach 18, but is that really an adult? I don't think so, I've decided that I'm changing the legal age of being an adult to 25. I think thats a good solid number and it still gives me 3 more years of acting immature. Okay, so i know that you're wondering why i'm going off on this tyrant of acting immature and me wanting to go out and do whatever, so i'll tell you about my night.

I've been seeing this guy for a few weeks now, and its moving along nice. However, for those of you who don't know me, I get bored VERY easily. I simply can't keep doing the same things over and over again so when opportunity arises, i take it. My friend kevin was coming into town and him, lauren, and i decide we would like to spend the night at the strip club. I decide to invite this guy along, just to spice things up i guess (you can only go out to dinner and have the same conversation over and over again for so long). Well, I have definitely cut back on my drinking this past year, but it still doesn't mean that i'm going act all calm and normal when i drink. No, i'm going to be the same wild and crazy girl you all knew at plattsburgh. and well, thats exactly what i was like. It would have been fine if it was just kevin and lauren because they are used to that and well lauren is just as crazy if not more... actually probably more. This guy wasn't drinking and basically just sitting there watching me drink, dancing and making out with lauren, making fun of the strippers, and basically running all over the place like a crazy girl. i had a blast, i haven't drank like that in a long time and it made me miss it! To top it off, another sales rep from usfoods was there!! Perfect. Now everyone can go about talking about the girl from Kraft who takes guys to strip clubs and dances erotically with other girls. Oh did I mention the strippers kept trying to get lauren and i to dance on stage with them.. to be honest... I probably would have done it, if mike wasn't there!! haha well, i had a great night, i miss those kind of nights a lot. They make me think of plattsburgh and all the fun i had up there. it makes me miss my friends a lot, and most of all... it makes me realize that we are only young once... why grow up so fast? I have the rest of my life to act mature and settle down, why start now???

Monday, May 14, 2007

Foodshow Frenzy

This past month was a busy one for sure. I was travelling on the road a lot, doing food shows, meeting new customers, working more with the sales reps. I felt great to finally be doing work and having an impact on my company. I thought I would share with you what exactly i've been up to these past few weeks and how my job is going....

People always ask me, what exactly do you do? Well i'm here to tell you. Officially I am a customer sales representative with Kraft Food service Global North America Division. What does that job entail?? Let me explain. You go to a restaurant, cafeteria, coffee shop, whatever it may be where you are being served your food (hence food service). You sit down enjoy your meal, not wondering how everything comes together so nicely to be delivered to your plate. (I know this because I never wondered or even thought about how the food got to my plate.) Well here it is..... The customer we'll call it Julie' Restaurant just opened and needs a menu. In order to get a menu she needs food. Where does the food come from? A distributor, we'll call it JC Foods. What is a distributor? A distributor is a big place that holds tons of food products as well everything a restaurant may need, from plates, paper towel, napkins, toilet paper, etc. The distributor then "distributes" these items to customers that need them. And where do they get the food from? Kraft, along with thousands of other companys sell their products to the distributor, these companies are known as vendors. There are tons of distributors all over Big ones and small ones all fighting for the same business; Julie's Restaurant. Every week shes has a Sales Rep from JC Foods coming into her restaurant to take down the orders for the following week. She needs to take into consideration what she needs to have restocked, if she wants any specials, if she wants to change the menu and add something new, whatever it may be this sales rep from JC Foods will help her with.

Where do I come in in all of this? Well Kraft is a vendor that sells their products to Distributors all over the country such as JC Foods... For example on the retail side Kraft will pay money to keep their products on the shelf (if they are not on the shelf, then customers can't buy them). In foodservice, its pretty much the same story, Kraft pays JC Foods money to stock their products. With this money we are entitled to attend all of the JC Foods sales meetings, where we can then train their sales reps on our products and then motivate them (offering them prizes, etc.) to sell our products. With that comes food shows. Food shows are held twice a year (spring and fall) and are basically a big event for the customers (Julie's Restaurant) to come and see whats out there, get new ideas, get special deals and pricing, and eat a lot of free food. Along with the sales meetings and foodshows, I will also do "ride withs." Ride withs are basically when I ride a long with the Sales rep from JC Foods to each of their customers that day. As I ride along, I am introduced to the customer and I can then show them my products and tell them what I have to offer. Hopefully, out of the ride withs I will make an impact on the customer to buy Kraft products and also develop a relationship with the sales rep to have him/her sell Kraft products. Basically, its all about building those relationships!!!

So far, thats my job. That is what I've been doing the past few months non-stop. Theres a lot more too it as well, things like trackers and paperwork etc. but I don't need to get into that. I will also be working with more contracts and things like that, but I'm still learning and it takes time!!! So, in a nutshell, that is what I do with my time everyday. Everyday is something different and everyday I meet someone new. I love it, I'm still trying to remember everyones name or at least their face, i still have a long way to go, but I've also come a long way since December!!! Things are looking up, I just have to keep working hard and keep going to prove that I have what it takes to one day be president of Kraft!! (haha maybe thats just a dream, but a girl can dream!!!)

Sunday, May 13, 2007

One Year

It has officially been one year exactly. One year ago today I was walking in graduation, receiving my diploma... i was officially DONE. It felt good, no great actually. I was happy, nervous, scared, excited... one million emotions all mixed into one. I was crying my eyes out wondering how i could ever survive without my friends by my side. I was nervous about where my life would go and what i would be doing. i was excited about FINALLY being done with school forever. i was a college graduate and officially entering into the 'real world' and my life as an adult. One year has passed and really what can i say? Right now, my life is perfect. I feel like i have everything. i feel like my transition into becoming into an adult is truly beginning to happen. i can see myself changing and growing up more and more each day. i'm completely loving every minute of it.

People sometimes ask me how i ended up doing so well. The thing is, i worked very hard to get to where i am right now. for the past four years i worked my ass off, not only to improve intellectual knowledge and expanding my mind. But i also worked at improving myself. Four years ago, i was the most unhappy person in the world. i was miserable. That's it. Nothing that happened could have changed the way i saw/viewed my life. I thought that running away from my life would magically make everything better. I thought that by going away to college and starting over new, would make everything okay. I guess in a sense it did, but it also didn't exactly happen so magically. i was still miserable. I was still unhappy. i was still a lost little girl with no sense of direction whatsoever. I quickly learned that i needed a change. That i wanted to be happy, that i wanted to lead a perfect life. The lesson i learned is that perfection is only an image of what you make it out to be. Your life can be perfect no matter where you are as long as you view it that way. If you stop wanting things to happen and start loving what you already do have, then your life will be perfect. its that simple.

I worked hard for the past 5 years to live the perfect life. Or to simply enjoy my life no matter what. You can work towards goals... but if you don't enjoy the ride there, then the goal won't even be worth it. All through college i met some of the most amazing people in the world. Some people who were just so different from what i was used to. In high school everyone was the same. Everyone tried to be the same... and well i guess i just wasn't the same. Once i got to college and became introduced to so many different and unique people, i finally felt like i truly belonged. I never had to try and act a certain way. i never had to impress anyone. i never had to work at being friends with people and keeping those friendships. Everything pretty much just flowed into place. and most of all, i was able to be myself. I was comfortable with being myself because for the first time i saw that it was okay. I saw that i was a unique individual with a great personality. I saw that my friends no matter how different they were from me, all seemed to get along so well. I saw that differences in people whether it be clothes, opinions, hobbies... really doesn't matter as long as you can sit, laugh, have a great time together. I gained so much confidence over four years that one year ago today... i truly felt ready. i felt that i could take on anything. for the first time in my life i was confident in my life. i was confident in everything. i knew that i would end up okay. i knew that everything would work out exactly the way it was supposed to.

Well, here i am. a year has gone by and it felt like a lifetime. I can't say that this was the easiest year of my life. There were a lot of struggles, a lot of disappointments, a lot of hardships and rough times, but in the end it was all worth. Those moments when you are at your worst, i truly feel that they make you into a stronger person. i feel that they help boost you into becoming a better person, as long as you are able to look at the situation and learn from it. In my final job interview (the one that got me the best job in the world!) I was asked what was your biggest failure? I thought about it, i thought really hard and i simply responded "I don't believe in failure because i think that in any situation whether it be good or bad you can ultimately learn from it. You can grow from it, you can take what went wrong and find a way to make it better. You can find a way to better yourself, and to me, any situation that you take something out of and grow from is a success..." Maybe that's what got me the job... who knows but either way i'm grateful for everything that I have in my life right now. I still have sooo much that I want to accomplish, but i'm in no hurry, because i have faith that whats meant to be will always find a way and i know now, that i'm strong enough to take on any challenge and overcome it the best way that i can. I don't see failure in my future, i see a lot more successes and i can't wait for them.