Beauty Comes From Within

Yeah, yeah, yeah our Mom's have said it to each of us more than one time in our lives. Whether we were crying over a breakup, a zit on prom night or the fact that we couldn't fit into our jeans from last summer. It's a hard thing to realize when splattered on every billboard, magazine ad or TV show is a size 0 skinny blonde supermodel our boyfriends, brothers, Uncles and Dad's all adore.

However, the over edited and airbrushed models aren't real and probably lead an unhappy life. I mean imagine if you couldn't go out and eat a greasy cheeseburger after a night out just cause you wanted to. And you probably couldn't event have that night out you need after a tough week becuase alcohol has too many calories. No thanks! Plus, the majority of them are so airbrushed it's ridiculous, have you seen the stars without their makeup?

It's October and Breast Cancer Awareness month. There are so many strong woman out there who have gone through so much and still enjoying and going on with their life it's amazing. I came across the article below that just seemed to put things into perspective. Warning, it's about a 26 year old woman and her struggle to have/want sex with her boyfriend after cancer. It's brutally honest, funny and incredibly touching. http://bit.ly/1277MK

Whirlwind Weekend

Wow, the past week has been such a blur! Coming off the flu and heading to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for Morgan and Mindi's wedding! However, let's focus on the Mexico trip as the flu and cold stuff is soooo behind me.

So, we left on Wednesday, October 21st at the butt crack of dawn. We had a nice journey down there except the part where we had to land and sit in Guadalajara to wait out the rain. Hurricane Rick caused quite a bit of rain on Wednesday and we had to wait out the storm to land. But once we did, party time!

Wednesday night we had a great dinner with everyone who was there. There was about 10 of us and we ate, drank and laughed ourselves silly. They have this fabulous desert drink called Mexican Coffee (or sexy coffee). It involves lighting tequila on fire and pouring it back and forth so it's a big flame and then lighting your cup on fire and serving you coffee. It actually tasted like hot chocolate but the presentation is worth it. After dinner we enjoyed some late night cocktails and off to bed.

Thursday we hung out at the swim up bar, the beach and Jim and I went on a zip line/canopy tour in the jungle. It was so much fun. We zip lined over the river, through the jungle and saw a lot of cool stuff. We were about 700 feet up zip lining across miles of the jungle. The guides were amazing and so funny, we had a really good time. Afterwards we got to hold monkeys which was awesome but we also got to hold a giant boa constrictor...well we = me cause Jim was afraid of it.

That evening we went into town for the rehearsal dinner at a local tapas restaurant that overlooked the city. It was a cool restaurant and view but the food was so so. Then a few of us checked out the local scene downtown and headed back to the hotel. Since the hotel was all inclusive it was hard to justify spending more money on drinks out on the town. We ended up hanging out for awhile and retreating to our room early that night.

Oh yeah, our room was so nice. We had our own private balcony that overlooked the sea. Our bed was positioned just so when you laid in it the window could be open and you could hear the waves and see the ocean. It was just amazing. The bathroom was great and the shower was all glass and tile, I just love tropical showers. We would spend a lot of time just laying in bed and relaxing and enjoying the view with an ice cold cerveza.

Friday came and it was just a beautiful day! We spent all day swimming in the ocean and relaxing leading up to the wedding. It was the most amazing sunset ever when they got married (see pic to left), you couldn't have asked for anything better. The ceremony was amazing and they were both so happy. We continued the party well into the night with lots of dancing, tequila and laughter. Our server Rosalio just loved to keep bringing us tequila so that lead to a pretty fun night.

Saturday Jim and I took a snorkeling adventure that was so fun. We cruised out to our snorkeling spot and spent about an hour or so checking out the fish and swimming through caves. We then continued to our lunch location, which was a local beach nestled up against the jungle. The boat ride was amazing. Our friends Sarah and Jake also did a boat cruise and ended up getting engaged on theirs! Woo Hoo- her ring is amazing and we were so happy for them!

We headed back for our last dinner with the group at the resort. We enjoyed a fine Italian dinner complete with wine, sexy coffee and great food! It was a perfect dinner to end a fabulous trip! Jim and I were so exhausted from all the partying, food and drinking that we hit the bed early. We had an early flight back to the states and just wanted to hang out and enjoy our last night together.

So we got back on Sunday and were exhausted. We really really missed Chili so it was so great to see her at our house when we got home! We watched the second half of the Bengals ass whooping against the Bears and were asleep by about 10PM!

All in all it was an amazing trip and I am so glad Morgan and Mindi invited us to be a part of it. It was a nice break from Cincinnati and also cleared up my allergies getting out of the city- thank the Lord!

I consider myself extremely lucky to have had the opportunity to attend their wedding and spend time in Mexico with some of my best friends. These are the things that make life happy and great:)

Been in Flu Hiding

Ugh is all I have to say about the past week or so. Everywhere you go and every channel you turn on you hear about THE FLU! I am a naturally healthy person and usually don't get sick, but I got hit by the bug.

Starting about last Tuesday or so, I got what seemed to be my normal allergies. The typical Cincinnati stuffy nose, watery eyes and sinus headaches that feel like an elephant is sitting on your forehead. But I also got this nagging cough that I never got in the past with allergies.

It started as a dry cough, the best way to describe how it felt was to imagine someone putting a blow dryer down your throat on high heat and leaving it run for hours. I couldn't stop coughing or drink enough water and I can't even think about putting one more cough drop in my mouth without throwing up. Sometimes, it would get so bad I would cough until I cried and was gasping for air- it wasn't pretty.

After about 2 days of this my Doctor finally told me to come in. So I went in on Thursday and he diagnosed me with allergies. Gave me some steroids and Singular to try to clear it up. He told me to try the nasal spray first and see what happens.

So, home I went. Come Friday,still not feeling better. Even more congested than before. I could still barely breath and was still coughing every 30 seconds. I would take DayQuil, NyQuil and try to gete through the hours but it never was easy. 4AM coughing are normal, I think Jim wants to kill me:(

Well, I think that Dr. appointment gave me the Flu. I woke up Saturday morning so sick, the kind of sick you never wish upon anyone. At one point, Jim said are you going to be ok, I've never seen anyone throw up as much as you have. To be even grosser, I have no idea what I was throwing up cause I wasn't eating and it was really chunky - ewww- TMI.

I immediately called my Doc, who gave me TAMIFLU and said to take it easy. So a full day of this and coughing to boot. My head hurt so bad and my body just aches, my chest is so sore from all the coughing I can't take it anymore.

Well I woke up Sunday and the Flu symptoms had disappeared, thank the lord! But I still had my cough. So now I'm going on a little over a week and I have all these same symptoms I started with and even caught the Fly in there somewhere. I'm started the Singular which seems to have slowed my cough down a bit!

I am set to go to Mexico for a wedding tomorrow and am hoping the hot weather gets rid of whatever I have caught. It has been awful and I am really sick of sitting at my house and not seeing people, but better that than risk getting anyone else sick.

Oh yeah, the worst part is I can't see my Mom because she had surgery that required a lot of cutting and moving around of organs that if she got sick or had any chance of getting an infection would be very bad for the stitches. So, when you want your Mom the most I can't even see her.

So, today I have one last look over from the Dr. and hopefully i get approved to go to Mexico! If I don't I might just cry for real, especially since I didn't get trip insurance:( Sorry for the lack in blogging but I've been so sick I literally got my work done and than would lay in front of a TV with rags on my head until I finally fell asleep.

Hopefully you don't hear from me cause I"m off to Mexico! Arriba Arriba!

Monster Mash

I know, these are so cheesy but they crack me up! I've been promising a funny good post for Paul and he's been stalking me for days about it- so here it goes!

The Monster Mash video card....Happy Halloweenie!

As mentioned, it features Paul as the vampire for obvious reasons (you know, the guy who sneaks around at night and sucks people's blood), Jodie as the main evil doc because she's sneaky and seem all sweet on the outside but has an evil side, Jim as the wear wolf man because of the chest hair hanging out of his shirt, Rob as Frankenstein because I already had a Rob head made and then me:)

If you like dumb humor and crack up at things like this enjoy...really enjoy Jim's ROAR at the end!

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Social Media Is What I Want - Yeah, Yeah

Ok ok do I sound like a broken record? It's everywhere-every brand, advertiser, marketer is screaming it - SOCIAL MEDIA! If you are asking yourself right now, what is it? Then you better step out of 1990 and into 2009.

A friend of mine passed me along the video below detailing some interesting facts about social media and is it a fad? Is it going to die and newspapers, TV and traditional media will be back in the spotlight? I'm sure this has been the topic at many agencies and companie, but in my opinion, no, it's only just begun.

The video below goes through some of the interesting facts on social media and how quickly it is spreading. Actually, since I first saw this video a week ago I went to the blog where it was originally posted, socialnomics.com, only to discover a newer version is available. That's just the thing about social media, it's happening fast and at a rate we can barely keep up with. At some point it will max out- right?

Probably not. It will just get deeper and deeper with more options, more ways to connect, and even scarier ways for advertisers to get to the right target. Of all the facts in the video, I thought the following were interesting or somewhat funny.

• Social media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the web. WHAT? I find this shocking for 1 reason: I've never watched porn on the Internet (unless you count checking out "One Night in Paris" - come on, I'm a celebrity junkie you think I wouldn't check it out?)

• If you haven't heard, Facebook is sweeping the nation. It's mentioned on CNN, MSNBC, my favorite TV show HIMYM, The Hills, 60 Minutes, etc. It's EVERYWHERE!!! Even more interesting that QZONE (only click if you read Chinese) in China is larger than Facebook!

• Most interesting fact 200,000,000 blogs and you found mine :) Don't you feel extra special?
  

So with all this buzz about social media it's got to be doing something right? Well of course or else their wouldn't be any buzz. According to the video, 78% of users accept a peers recommendation. I happen to work for a company where I know word of mouth (WOM) goes far, with more than 50% of our members coming from WOM.

For example, are you not from Cincinnati? Do you know who Chad "OchoCinco" Johnson is? Have you heard about his Twitter account? Well unless you live in a cave you have. He's the most talked about sports celebrity and he's letting the world get to know him via Twitter. It's gone so far to get the attention of the NFL Commissioner. Come on folks, I couldn't name a wide receiver on every football team but I bet people could name a Bengals wide receiver if forced to. And I bet some baby boomers and older folks found out about Twitter thanks to him.

I like social media. I like Facebook, I like blogging, I like reading blogs, I like having everything I want at my fingertips with my iPhone. Social media is what I want and with over 96% of generation Y using it you better hop to it folks!

Crazy and Under the Weather

As you can tell from the lack of post, since last Friday things have been crazy. I pretty much have been go go go and very little rest rest rest, which basically made me sick and feel like this all week!

However, since last Friday a lot has happened. We had our Cincinnati SparkPeople Convention and it was a success. The day was jam packed with lots of good stuff and our members loved it. We did a fun photo shoot for it after the event for a SoapBoxMedia Story - see the picture to the right. I am cracking up at the fact that Grant is trying to do the splits like Stepfanie but not quite cutting it! Yes, Paul is also in this photo - can you guess which one?

Then on Sunday I went to the Bengals game- which was awesome!! The Bengals beat the Steelers and hopefully is the start of our season! Who-Dey

This week has just been a blur since I haven't felt well. Pretty much get up, go to work, come home, sleep do it all over again and now all of a sudden it is Friday. I had a pretty boring week and nothing fun to add!

Tonight is the launch party for Jim's Cincinnati drink, Hoist! I will give a fun good update on the launch party next week - I am really looking forward to it as long as I feel ok :) For more on Hoist - check them out or follow them on Twitter or Facebook or just follow the Hoist Camino!

To feel like you got something out of this blog, check out the best YouTube clips of all time - supposedly (I think some are missing).