Vacation Recap: A Long Time Coming

The first week back from vacation is a tough one. Always has been, always will be. I won't go so far as to say that my week back was impossible, but the scenery in Vancouver, BC left me begging for more and it certainly would have been nice to get a few more days in. Since vacations only happen once a year, it looks like I'll be living vicariously through my collection of photos for the next 12 months instead. The story of our adventures is long and full of delicious details, so I think the only thing to do in this case is keep the entry short and to the point.

Our very first stop after getting off the plane...


Vancouver at night...


The best place in North Vancouver to get a facial (thanks Moe!)...


The chilly but BEAUTIFUL waters of Lynn Canyon...


Lost Lake up at Whistler...


The view from our hotel room (thanks Mom and Dad!)...


Beautiful, isn't it?

My Mission for the Month

Since the summer is a rather slow season for travelling (at least here at FUN Enterprises) I've got a new project in the works that I'm pretty excited about. At the suggestion of my boss, I'm writing an article about novelty programming trends that I hope to have published in Campus Activities Magazine. For those of you not in the bizzzz, Campus Activities Magazine is an entertainment magazine designed specifically for artists, agents, and those in charge of booking college events to keep them up to date with the newest artists and hottest trends in college programming. Right now we're running a FUN Enterprises summer ad in their special series at the back of the magazine, so hopefully this article will get us a little closer to the front cover. If all goes according to plan, this will be my first official publication and I'm super excited about it. The main goal of the article is to find out how many novelty programs students and their advisers book on their campus, how much money they spend on this kind of programming and when they book. These are some very simple but important questions that I for one had never really thought to ask. I always figured that my experience as a student programmer was enough, but as it turns out, every school works differently. Imagine that!! The first exciting find I've made is that the contacts I've been calling are MUCH more willing to answer survey questions than to listen to my sales pitch (hopefully that's just because they haven't met me yet??) As of right now, I have about a 20% success rate of getting responses between the calling and emailing I've been doing. This is a good start, but I'd really like to get that closer to at least 80% to have some solid stats for the article. Now the prospect of being published in an actual publication is very exciting, but it's also making me just a little nervous. How many people are going to read this article? How many people are going to love it or hate it? What if someone thinks that my theory is totally off base? This time I'm not just writing for me, I'm writing as a correspondent for FUN Enterprises. STRESSFUL. Despite all this, I am bound and determined to be the best correspondent that FUN Enterprises has ever seen! I will make them proud and I will knock the socks off all of those Campus Activities Magazine readers! Does that sound good for a daily affirmation? I think I'll give it a shot...

Why Do I Travel? I'll Tell You! (In Case You Don't Remember)

So it is certainly no secret that I spend much of my time travelling and seeing cool stuff. The one question that I have not yet answered is why. Why do I stay in crazy hotel rooms with wasps and drive Lego shaped rental cars? Why do I have strange encounters at rest areas and get bear hugged by Hall of Fame Baseball players? The answer is very simple. It's my job! Sort of. Here's how this all breaks down. I work for FUN Enterprises, a novelty entertainment company that sends me all over the country making fun swag like key chains and dry erase boards with people's pictures. Basically I bounce from college to college, invading campuses and bringing our programs to their events. It's SO MUCH FUN. (If there was sound on this, that would be really really loud!!!) In addition to loving the fact that I get to visit places all over the country that I'd probably never know about if it weren't for this job, I get to be the new kid on campus everyday and have FUN all the time. I mean, how could I not have fun taking a group of college students and putting their faces on a coffee mug? Seriously. Without going into too much detail now and giving away all the fun and exciting details, I'll leave you with this, a few examples of what I do for work: