Back for real this time!

Okay, okay, I'm back to blogging for real this time!!  Lots to catch you up on....Roomie Weekend 2009, trip to Vegas with my dad, Maverick the Wonder Puppy, and.....drumroll please....crossing another item off THE List!  

To start off though, here are a couple of pictures of my latest cake creation.  Actually cupcake creations.  We had a Spring Festival at work where people could bring their kids to the office for pictures with the "Big White Bunny" (politically correct Easter Bunny), watch a magic show, play some games, and have an "Egg Hunt".  I made Bunny Cupcakes for the big event.

They have Orbit gum for teeth, a jellybean nose, and white chocolate ears.  At first I didn't think they were going to turn out like I had hoped, but they ended up really cute!  Without further ado, here they are. :)

I'm Alive!

I had really good intentions of blogging tonight...and really for the past month.  But its just been really busy.  The 3rd week of January is our annual Sales Summit at work where we bring in all of our sales guys from all over the world for a weeklong kickoff/unveiling of new stuff, etc.  So the first two weeks are spent frantically pulling things together for it.  And then the week after is recovery!  So I'll be back to blogging soon, but I'll leave you with a few pictures from the last night of Summit - our big awards dinner.  Or as my friend Lauren calls it...Sabre Prom. :)

Potlucks...mmmm

I love potlucks. I love potlucks even more when everyone raves about my dish and asks me to send them my recipe! It satisfies that scared child in all of us that is wondering "are people going to like my dish? Is the food that I think is good actually weird or gross?" Hooray for Broccoli-Rice Casserole! :)

Blah Blah Blahg

I'm sick. You've gotta love having at least one of these posts every 6 months or so! The fun part of this one is that my fabulous sinus infection hit the same week as our company Talent Show that I was supposed to sing in (its a part of our Give Together fundraising week and all proceeds go to charity). I sang in it anyways - it wasn't great, but the song I sang was more funny than serious so it wasn't terrible. Now I'm just hoping that I can spend this weekend getting well so I can hit next week with full force...I've got a TON of work to do since quite a bit of this week was taken up with Give Together and Talent Show stuff. Blah.

Travelocity "Race to Savings" Sale

Hey guys! Since I get the question all the time "can you get me discounts?" I thought I'd post it here that for once, I can! :)

Travelocity is having a Race to Savings sale for the next month in honor of The Amazing Race premiere. For the next week (Sept 2-8) I can give you a "Friends and Family" discount code that will get an extra $50 off a 3+ night stay at any of the participating hotels on top of the discounts that are already there.

Its not a ton, but if you're planning to go somewhere between now and January 15th and you're ready to book your hotel this week, leave me a comment or send me an email and I'll send you the discount code along with a note about how I'm jealous because I'm not going anywhere.

Happy Traveling!
Emily

Heard Over Cubicle Walls...

Today I heard this conversation as I was at work:

"Is it just me, or do you get more work done when your boss is out of town too?"

I feel a Dilbert comic strip coming on.... :)

Return of the Turkey!

Two weeks ago, I told you about the turkey that I saw walking around by the highway next to my office. People think that he lives in the woods behind our building that people may be feeding him which is why he comes around our building.

This morning as I was coming in, he was hanging out in the walkway between our parking garage and our buildings! So I whipped out my cell phone and got a couple of shots.

So without further ado, here is the new Sabre mascot....um....okay he doesn't have a name, so we'll call him Terrell the Turkey!

Now that I think about it, how do I know its a "he"? Is it a "she"? Anyone know how to tell the sex of a turkey?

Thanksgiving already?

This morning, I was driving into work as usual. As I was about to pull onto our campus, I had to stop under the bridge at 114 to avoid an animal in the road. You're probably thinking dog, cat, maybe at weirdest some kind of livestock.....wrong. The animal that I had to avoid was a WILD TURKEY! There was a wild turkey just walking along, hanging out under the highway like it was totally normal. It didn't seem freaked out or anything. By far the oddest thing I've ever experienced in my morning commute!
I didn't have a camera with me, but this is almost exactly what it looked like.

Goodbye Rodney!

This Monday, we celebrated the retirement of my former boss, Rodney. In two years at Sabre (next Monday! Can't believe I've already been there two years!) I have had three bosses. Rodney was the second; he was my boss from Jan - Nov 2007. Even after I stopped reporting to him, we have still worked very closely as he is the operations manager for my product.

Rodney was really great. I learned a lot about technology from him...and I think I was even able to pull him into Marketing-Land once or twice! :) One other thing I've always appreciated was the random life advice he'd throw out every now and then - thoughts on career, investments, taking vacation, blocking lunch time to get out the office, etc. Rodney, I know you'll probably never read this, but I wish you well in the future!

It's time for another....

Good Idea:
Using your I.D. badge to get through the turnstiles at work.

Bad Idea:
Trying to use your I.D. badge to get through the turnstiles at work after you've accidentally put it in the dryer, somehow deactivating it.

I love feeling like an idiot at work. I might have forgotten to mention the dryer thing to the security guards when I had to go get a new one. It just magically stopped working today! :)

For Everyone Who Works in Corporate America...

Anyone else find this oddly accurate? :)

The Office

Every Thursday night before the strike, I would get together with a group of friends to watch The Office. We would watch and laugh hysterically at the crazy things that Michael would do....his wacky meetings, fun runs, random parties, etc. Every now and then, people who don't work in Corporate America ask me if The Office is real. Most of the time I say no...until yesterday.

Yesterday we had our Quarterly DFW Employee Meeting. As I looked around at what was going on, I realized that very little of The Office is an exaggeration. The meeting was in a ballroom at the Solana Marriott. It started out with a rock band made of Sabre employees playing a few songs. They are called "The Gross Margins" and even have a logo that is the strings/frets of a guitar acting as a graph like a stock graph. Then they started playing a video of a lit fireplace (for ambiance, ya know!) and a guy in a smoking jacket a la Hugh Hefner was sitting in a chair acting as the MC in the style of Masterpiece Theater. There proceeded to be skits to give us important lessons about our company and strategy....a VP acted as Scrooge falling asleep and "dreaming" via video of the Ghost of Sabre Past, the Ghost of Sabre Present, and the Ghost of Sabre Future. Another VP and a sales guy were the Spartan Cheerleaders cheering on the SVP as he talked about our 2008 strategy (complete with "The Perfect Cheer.") The Gross Margins entertained a little more playing songs like I'm Gonna Be (I Would Walk 500 miles) and Come Together (Beatles). Then we had a dinner and an open bar. And as I was watching these skits, I could TOTALLY see Michael Scott in every one!

But yesterday's meeting (and every quarterly meeting for that matter) isn't the only thing that reminds me of The Office. Remember the "Fun Run" episode? Well we had a "Give Together" month where all of the employees donated time to service projects and money to charities. There were a bunch of events during the week to raise money. One day we had a "County Fair" with wacky relay races, a 1 Mile Fun Run, a Chili/Curry Cookoff, and pig races. Not kidding...pig races. Oh yeah, they also had a mechanical bull that all of the VPs and SVPs rode. At the end of the week there was a company talent show complete with prizes for the top 3 acts. (Yes I was in the talent show....no I didn't win. But people still tell me I should have which makes me feel good. :) )

It just really hit me yesterday how funny this all was because it never seemed that crazy to me but yet we think that The Office is so far out there! Really the only difference between my company and the things that happen at Dunder Mifflin is that our leadership is all VERY competent and not complete idiots like Michael Scott....but other than that, its all pretty much dead on. I dont' have any pictures of The Gross Margins or this week's skits, but here are a couple of pictures from a quarterly meeting last year...this one was themed The Incredibles and all of the skits were about "The Incredibles" (Relia Girl, Value Boy, Collabor Mom, Mr. S.T. (Straight talk....kept saying "I Pity The Fool"), and Captain Undisputed defeating the Dot Commissar's evil plots to take down Sabre Airline Solutions. And remember...these aren't interns being hazed and forced to do these skits. These are the President of Airline Solutions, a VP, a couple of product managers....it's really amusing. As silly as it may seem though, I think I get more out of these meetings than I do from all of the other traditional PowerPoint presentations that I sit through and/or give each week. :)

When I Grow Up....

This Thursday, I had a half-day meeting with my new team at work. We talked about plans for 2008 and at the end started talking about our personal goals and what to think about before we have meetings with our managers in a couple weeks. My new boss started talking about personal development and growth and said something to the effect of "We definitely want to help you get to your goals and where you want to be in your career...just let us know where you want to be."

This has been one of my biggest insecurities since I started grad school....where do I want to be? I got so tired of trying to figure it out at that point that I just picked something different than most people and said "I want to be in strategy." I had no idea what that looked like, but it seemed to please most employers and got me quite a few job offers. Well now I'm a product manager - half strategy, half marketing - and I love my job. But I also know that I don't want to be doing this exact same thing 10 years from now. Pretty much nobody in the business world wants to stay where they are. But I don't have a clear direction of where I want to go either. Every year on our performance review, there is a section talking about short and long term goals and I never know what to put besides "I want to have a team of my own to manage."

My question is, who DOES know exactly what they want to do? I know that I like my job functions and that business was the way to go for me, but I can't say that in 10 years I want to be a product manager or that in 10 years I want to be working in Corporate Strategy or anything else. I don't even know exactly where I want to be in 2-3 years! But the more that I think about this, the more I wonder....am I going to be left behind or kept down in my career because I don't have a completely clear picture of the path I want to take? Are there people out there who really have their career path fully planned out and actually follow that plan?

Another Day, Another $100....

Well, I did it! I bet $100 on black at the Bellagio (no Circus, Circus for me, Jonathan!) and WON!! Here's my proof of another thing crossed off THE List.

2. Bet $100 on black at a Roulette table in Vegas


P.S. My camera is broken and my parents were out of town too, so we have to deal with cell phone pictures for this trip. I was in the conference for most of the trip anyways, so not too much was picture-worthy.

My conference was in the MGM Grand Hotel. I really liked it there, but I never realized how BIG these hotels were! I realized on the third day that I entered this hotel on Monday and had not walked outside and breathed fresh air since. There is so much in one hotel that you could spend a 4 day vacation there, never leave, and never repeat activities, clubs, or restaurants (except gambling).

I was hanging out with customers in the evenings for the most part, so I didn't get to see any shows which was sad (I really wanted to see Ka in my hotel!), but I did get to go to a party in a penthouse on Tuesday night! It was awesome! View from the Penthouse balcony:Finally, I spent a LOT of time walking back and forth between the hotel part of MGM and the conference center which are seriously far apart. I decided that the designers of this particular hotel are cruel people....this is what you have to walk by every time you go to the conference center. Its like they're saying "Wouldn't you rather be HERE right now instead of sitting in a bunch of conference sessions?"
And with that, we end Emily's cell phone tour of the conference in Vegas. One of our sales guys, Rob, had a camera and took a couple of pictures, so I may try to get some of those and write some other stories soon. But for now I'm going to bed...3 days of VERY little sleep does NOT do a body good. :)

I'm a TIME Travelin' Girl!

Tonight, I did something amazing....I spoke with somebody from the future. How did I do this you ask? At 9:02pm on September 16th, I found a conduit to the future through an amazing thing called a "Telephone" and spoke with people who were sitting in Singapore at 10:02am September 17th. The fun of doing global business. To steal a line from Chandler on Friends, "Listen, don't tell me what happens tomorrow...because I like to be surprised."

Okay, in all seriousness, I leave for Vegas tomorrow afternoon! The votes are in and I will be betting $100 on black in Roulette, so wish me luck. :)

It's time for another....

Good Idea:
Volunteering to play a "trivia game" at a work function, answering questions about a few corny skits that are supposed to inform employees about different initiatives and such, and actually WINNING!! (I won an oh-so-fun Sabre Airline Solutions gym bag)

Bad Idea:
Missing a question about halfway through whose answer is....MY OWN PRODUCT!! That's right, I missed a question about the two delivery methods for our products - local install vs. eMergo ASP solutions. At this point one VP laughed and said "What product do you work for Emily???" I said "Well I used to work for eMergo..." and then my VP chimed in with "I would like to announce that I have a resource up for grabs if anyone wants it!" Most embarrassing moment of my career thus far....but in my defense, the question was worded really weirdly and no one else got what the girl running the game was asking for either. :)

Its time for another....

Good Idea:
Saying hello and having quick conversations everyday with a guy at work who sits in the same area as me.


Bad Idea:
Not asking the guy's name the first time we talked and letting him call me by name when 6 months later I still have no idea who he is. Its definitely past the point where I can ask him his name now

Its Time for Another....

Good Idea:
(Hopefully) impressing your boss by doing decent presentations two days in a row - one of them presenting a new idea that he thinks it going to have good impact for the company

Bad Idea:
Falling down the stairs as you're walking out of the building with your boss in front of about 50 people, immediately following the aforementioned impressiveness, and twisting your knee.

The Eternal Conundrum...

Its 3:15pm and I'm sitting in my office. I've tied up all of the loose ends that I needed to before I leave for two weeks , but I still have a meeting at 4:30pm that I have to stick around for. What do I do for the next hour and fifteen minutes? :(

Update: I decided to take this time to switch my blog to New Blogger. And with a new blog should come a new background, so I changed that too. This took all of 15 minutes. Only one hour to go. sigh....

Guest Blogger Today! (seriously we got this email at work. ha!)

Hello Luverlys,

It’s the Roaming Gnome here. I was absolutely gobsmacked when I heard I was up for election into the Madison Avenue Advertising Walk of Fame. Have you had a chance to stuff the ballot box for me yet? I’d hate to think of the ribbing I’d receive from my fellow gnomes if I lost out to those pesky Keebler Elves.

It would be smashing if you could vote for lil ol’ me. And since they’re keeping me honest with only one vote per computer, I’d be tickled pink if you pass this link along to your family and friends:

http://advertising.yahoo.com/advertisingweek_06/icon_poll.html


Toodle Pip for now,

The Roaming Gnome