"Tis the season...

The last couple of week have been a stressful, exhilarating and life changing. Work has been crazy busy and when I say crazy, I mean crazyyy.

There has been ongoing joke about how we are no longer plum but plump- because we are always ordering take-out and enjoying one too many glasses of wine at the end of the day. Well I have nothing to worry about. The other morning I tried on a pair of jeans that I never returned. When I bought them, the line was too long for the fitting room so I purchased them to later find out that they were too small on me. In getting ready for work, I wished I had another pair of skinny jeans and TA-DA, they fit me!! I did my little butt shaking and shared the news with the boy. This means that I have kept off the weight since working at Il Porto and then some!!

Monica is now working at PLUM... Yay and got to experience the craziness within her first hour. Her working there has reinforced my hunch of us being a good team. We bounce ideas back and forth and there's absolutely no baby mama drama. We've enjoyed being able to call some shots here and there and most certainly have proven ourselves worthy of being there. Although we are both under 23yrs of age, we are not letting anyone stop us. Monica and I are the youngest people in history working on the US Census campaign- that speaks volume. Like she once stated, we go together like black beans and rice!! We are the "hybrid chicas"

Last Tuesday we went to the Eargoo holiday party which was a blast. We met a lot of fun, industry people and most certainly expanded our network. We played WII sports and I lost to Monica and she lost to Nicole. Speaking of which, she's a cool chica. She also is 22 and definitely making a name for herself. She's a producer at Eargoo and working on such shows as The Desperate Housewives of Atlanta. Her office and ours is merely 10 blocks away-- lunch date soon!!

Last Wednesday was Lorraine and Taso's Copywriting Rumble at Pratt. It was amazing to seeing the caliber of work and be able to give our personal input to the students. This was my third time being on the panel of judges, yet it was different from the previous times. This time, I really got what it means to be a mentor and be able to give feedback and make a sound decision. It's interesting how much I've grown as a designer, art director and leader. I could immediately see some of the students faces when their group didn't win and went into encouraging mode". My semester- my team didn't win, Monica's semester- her team didn't win and yet look at us. We're both Art Directors, not interns creating amazing work. Stu from Pangea with whom we work with and Billy Kent, commercial and film director work the other two judges on the panel

Ian and I got all of our Christmas shopping done!! YAY! I won't share what we got for everyone because most of the family members have access to this blog! It feels great to be able to spend money on everyone's gifts and not have to look under the couch for pennies [HA, not that we have a couch or anything]. We will be leaving for home late on the 23rd and although it will be nice to get away from NYC, it won't be the same. I'm pretty certain that I will be doing work the whole time and won't really be able to enjoy home as I know it.

Monica and I bought everyone at PLUM their Christmas gifts today. We got 6 goldfishes, each one matching everyone's personalities. We went to Fish's Eddy and both an assortment of glasses that also go with everyone. We also went ahead and named them all:

Lorraine is Luda because of the Ludacris Pepsi spot she worked on
Taso is Beyonce because of a spot he worked on
Sung is Mickey because he used to work for Disney
Jacq is Gentleman Caller because of a reference she made one day at work
Monica is Rice and I'm Black Beans cuz of how we work together.

Everyone from Pipeline and THEM are probably wishing they had fishes too. Monica and I are a little concerned with the temperature change in the office at night and our new office pets. We shall see how it all turns out.