Lingerie and Fashion Design: My Internship this Summer

This summer I am living in picturesque Newburyport, MA and working for Bennett & Company, a fashion design company that makes lingerie for retailers such as Frederick's of Hollywood and Victoria's Secret. Though I can't talk about what I do specifically for confidentiality reasons, I will rave on and on about how amazing this company is and how fantastic it is to work for them. A quick peek at their press page gives an overview of some of my favorite aspects of the company: words like "green," "spiritual," and "compassion" abound, accompanied by a myriad of gorgeous pictures of the woman behind the company, Jacalyn Bennett. Jacalyn founded her company in 1984 based in the idea of "a corporation with a conscience," embracing environmental initiatives, human rights and social conciousness. She looks to Gandi and Carl Jung as her inspirations, and her company is guided by the Ghandian principal that personal service “when it merges into universal service is the only service worth doing... service has to benefit all of humanity.” Bennett and Company employs 2,000 people total worldwide with factories in Hong Kong, Sri Lanka and China. The employees at those factories are treated well and paid fairly, and the company factories recognize and follow ALL laws regarding wages, hours, etc as well as receiving benefits like healthcare, housing, welfare and maternity leave. Although many companies these days view outsourcing as an opportunity to pay next to nothing for cheap labour from imporverished populations, Bennett and Company sees it as an opportunity to change the lives of everyone it employs. Employees overseas are treated exactly the same as employees stateside, and everyone is made to feel equal and welcome within the company. (from here)

Jacalyn Bennett, company founder and my boss this summer, is a wonderful and inspiration woman who has received many awards and acheivements, including but not limited to the Best Designed Factory for Silk and Handwork from the Chinese Government. She is as kind and benevolent as she is a beautiful and sharply intelligent businesswoman. It is relieving to me, someone who has never worked within the fashion industry, to learn that not every successful female in the fashion industry is like the judgemental Devil Wears Prada stereotype. I have felt nothing but welcome in my experiences within the company so far, and Jacalyn is an inspiration to me as a successful female business owner who also goes against the grain to ensure that human rights and the wellbeing of the earth are respected and valued.

I am having a wonderful time working at the company and learning so much and I'm extremely grateful for this opportunity! Aside from working, I'm also having a blast exploring the Massachusets North Shore ... more on that coming soon!

disclaimer: I do not represent or speak for the company. My opinion is my own and does not reflect the opinion of the company. All facts and publicity photos are taken from the company's website.

Outfit Post: Kansas City, MO

I got back yesterday from my trip to Kansas City to visit the boyfriend! We had a lot of fun doing things that involved giant dinosaurs, magical carriage rides, and lots of shopping and sillyness - more on that later. Here are some of the outfits I wore on the trip.




jacket: moschino via flea market
white lace cami: pitaya
skirt: forever 21 via wiwt_sales
moccasins: same seller as skirt on wiwt_sales (thanks!)
belt,necklace: vintage via flea market


White Embroidered Linen Jacket: Neiman Marcus via Flea Market
Skirt: American Apparel
Interlocking giant gold frogs necklace: vintage via flea market (great find)
Gladiator sandals: TJ Maxx


Jacket: Moschino via flea market
Cream raglan pullover: american apparel
Dark wash high waisted skinnies: Banana Republic factory outlet (only $20!)
Moccasins: wiwt_sales


Jacket, lace cami, and frog belt same as above.
PVC/Vinyl Skirt: flea market!
Wedges: Sears
Beaded necklace: flea market

A preview of what we did (detailed write ups and an attraction guide to come)


We ate with dinosaurs

rode in a magical carraige

shopped (bestey johnson love!)

imitated mannequins in forever 21

and pretended to be fish.

Update from My Life

So right now I'm sitting in my parent's house in Louisville, cuddling with my kitty and relaxing. I got back to Louisville on Friday and have been having a great time ever since, save the conflict with my parents about where to put all of my "stuff." Apparently I have too much "stuff" (though it can't possibly be THAT much - I have fit it all into a dorm room for the past 3 years, haven't I??) and my parents want to stick it in storage all summer!! But I refuse to part with my belongings, so instead they sit in the garage until I sort through them all in the next couple of weeks.

I've been spending a lot of time with my Louisville friends who I haven't seen practically all semester!! It's awesome to finally get to relax and hang out doing nothing again. For example last night Richie and I spent a good 4 hours listening to music on his itunes that we'd never heard, watching videos on youtube and taking webcam pictures/videos of us being ridiculous. And we were completely sober. It was a blast!!

On Thursday I'm headed to Kansas City to visit Flobee, aka the boyfriend. He moved out there earlier this semester for an awesome career opportunity (his first job out of college!!) He is thriving and apparently the entire city already worships him (which is not surprising if you've ever met this guy or seen him around campus - he has a huge fan club, everyone loves him because he is amazing and hilarious. I mean his name is Flobee what do you expect.) I'm excited because I've never been to Kansas City before! I'll definetly bring a camera. Then in 3 weeks my sister is having her wedding here at the house, which is going to be really lovely. Then I'm off to Boston for my fashion design internship with Bennett & Company, a lingerie designer! It's turning out to be quite an exciting summer.

Some aforementioned pics of me and Richie:

I'll spare you from the videos we made >.< haha.

Hospital Part 3

So I had to go the hospital. AGAIN. That makes 3 times in a week. Did I have time to do anything else? Like fill orders? Or catch up on my homework? Of course not, because I was in the hospital for most of the entire week. What did I do? Slept, took drugs, took drugs, took drugs, asked for more drugs, tried to eat my boyfriends hat, and watched Adult Swim from my hospital bed. For DAYS.

Anyway this hospitalization was as a result of a Pneumothorax, a precursor to a Collapsed Lung. Basically what happened is while they were putting in the pacemaker, they accidentally punctured my lung a tiny, tiny bit, and a tiny, tiny bit of air slipped out, resulting in massive amounts of pain. I was in the ER for 5 hours and received 5 syringes full of Morphine. Yeah. Morphine. It's like medical heroin. I was high as a kite. Anyway they took a CT Scan and an Xray and told me it would go away on its own, and then kept me in the hospital for another 2 nights to monitor it. They also gave me an oxygen mask to help it work itself out. Oxygen masks are cool because they give you more oxygen, but they suck because they are itchy and annoying and get in the way and irritate the skin around your mouth. I was an unhappy camper. If you have ever spent 7 or so nights hooked up to so many monitors that you cannot roll over without something beeping, or go to the bathroom without needing to be unhooked, you will understand my frustration. Although I look happy in the picture above (that's my boyfriend in the background, being a sweet heart and staying with me the entire time, running around the hospital to find me chocolate and dealing with my drug-induced craziness) I was not. Anyway now I am back at home with my trusty icepack on my wound, waiting patiently to drive back up to college on Sunday.

I think I am coming down with a cold. FML FML FML FML

Pacemaker!

So, I got my pacemaker put in! The entire procedure consisted of my catheter ablation - the one they attempted to do on Friday, but could not complete because of the vicinity of the problem area to what is essentially my heart's natural pacemaker - and then inserting a pacemaker. First they stuck 3 tubes into one of the incision in the main artery next to my groin, went up to my heart and fixed the open pathway caused by the WPW. Then they made a slit in the skin near my collarbone, hooked up some leads to my heart and plugged in a little pacemaker. It's not very big at all compared to some, and after the swelling goes down I won't even be able to see it sticking out of my skin (yay)! Plus the doctor I had is INCREDIBLE at suturing, all my nurses were raving about him, so the slit is going to heal up without leaving much of a visible scar at all, just a thin white line. There are dissolving stitches underneath the skin and dermabond, which essentially glues my skin together, on top to hold it in place. I've got an ice pack on there now to help with the pain/swelling. Last night I was partying it up with some Loritabs and a Morphine IV (and by partying I mean mumbling random stuff about eating my boyfriend's asparagus flavored cookie hat and falling asleep).

All in all, I feel GREAT (aside from the intense pain in my shoulder/collarbone). I can already tell I have loads more energy. I can't really use my left arm for about 6 weeks, so I'll need to get help carrying my backpack around and going from class to class, but I'll be able to resume normal activities in a week or two - even exercise! My resting heart rate is now set a 70, low is 65, high is 150, but those are all easily changeable. My old resting heart rate was 40, so this is a HUGE upgrade! I feel awesome. As soon as I'm not in tons of pain with a swollen chest and a sling around my arm I'm going to go conquer the world! :D

Also, Flobee and I are awesome in hospitals.

Update on my surgery

So I went in for my surgery Friday. It was really not that bad - possibly because I was given 3 IV bags of sedation drugs - and I was only in severe pain for about an hour after I woke up. My friends came to visit me and Flobee (my boyfriend) stayed the night with me watching adult swim and hanging out, which was surprisingly a blast! Also the hospital room was SUPER nice, no hospital smell or anything! The nurses were really friendly and awesome. The bad news is, I have to go back on Monday to get a Pacemaker. So here is an homage to my collar, which will henceforth feature a small raised circle.

Why I'm Having Heart Surgery Tomorrow

So I'm having heart surgery tomorrow, a fact which all of my friends and proffessors are aware of seeing as I'm going to be missing a week of classes! As awful as a week of makeup work is, the actual prospect of heart surgery is pretty freaking scary too - especially seeing as I just turned 20. Like I thought heart surgery was just for the over 50 crowd. I guess 20 is the new 50? Whatever. (I do this thing where I joke about stuff that's serious to make it seem like I'm not freaking out..... don't let it fool you, I'm TOTALLY freaking out. Like ... a lot.)

Anyway I figured I'd write a blog post explaining why I'm getting heart surgery at 1pm tomorrow and what exactly it is. First off, when I was 14 years old I was diagnosed with 2nd Degree Heart Block which essentially meant that my heart ventricules were not communicating properly with one another and as such I had a very irregular heartbeat with all kinds of skipping, resulting in an average resting heart rate of around 40, which is half of a healthy, average person's heart. This was not very dangerous, showed up randomly and didn't affect how my heart performed with things like excersizing, etc. It was monitored with an EKG and an overnight heart monitor every 6 months, and didn't change much except when I went through a period of not eating enough, when it slowed down even further and for a short time I was diagnosed with 3rd Degree or Complete Heart Block, which is quite fatal. (I started eating more after that wakeup call!)

Anyway, since then nothing much has happened with my heart. I turned 18 and switched around to find a good adult cardiologist. I saw a new one justthis summer. She squinted at my EKG and immediately said "You have WPW." I had never heard of that and was quite confused. The cardiologist explained that it was an electrical issue. Usually, electrical impulses flow one way through one part of the heart into the next, a one-way little doorway. With WPW, there is an extra little doorway which the electrical impulses occasionally get confused and go through the wrong direction, resulting in too many impulses going around and around in one place. She sent me to an electrical specialist, who confirmed the diagnosis and informed me of a symptom I'd never heard of before: Tachycardia, which sounds like a dinosaur but is really just a rapid heartbeat caused by the circling electrical impulses, which can happen at random. He said that I should look at getting a "diagnostic procedure" in the next 6 months or so. I discussed things with my parents and, as it was a new cardiologist and a new diagnosis, they wanted a second opinion. Over the next 6 months I started noticing a tachycardia about once a month. My chest would hurt a lot, I would feel extremely anxious and usually cry, need to lie down and relax and wait for my heart to stop pounding out of nowhere. Several times it lasted for over an hour. My boyfriend did some research on the subject and eventually blurted out that there was a 15% chance of me going into cardiac arrest during one of those episodes, which only caused me more anxiety! Finally, in December, I reminded my parents that I needed a follow-up cardiologist appointment.

The second opinion of the cardiologist was much more abrasive than the first cardiologist. Like the others, she immediately pointed out the WPW on my EKG and asked me about how often I had tachycardias, expressing shock and alarm when I told her about once a month. She used the terms "playing with fire" told my mother that if it were her daughter, she would get the diagnostic procedure done immediately, and that our vacation to california the following week to visit family would have to wait. The words "cardiac arrest" were also mentioned several times. Scared shitless, my family cancelled the trip and attempted to schedule the Catheter Ablation Procedure, a diagnostic procedure that was actually a lot more serious than it sounded at first. Basically it is a 4-8 hour procedure that involves going in through the main artery in my groin, poking around my heart and checking out what the heck is up with it. After that I'll need to stay completely immobile for 24 hours and then rest for about a week. Because the procedure involves so much, we weren't able to schedule it over my Christmas break and it got pushed back to this weekend.

Here's the really fun part though: my little collection of heart deficiencies (I also have a murmur and some other random stuff) is apparently extremely rare. I don't know why, exactly, but apparently it is. Also, I was apparently born with WPW, but nobody noticed somehow (????) until this past summer, and the symptoms just randomly showed up more and more frequently this semester, which is strange. Every cardiologist I've seen gets really excited over my records and nerds out trying to figure out what the heck is up with this strange irregularity, which is flattering but also weird. The other thing is that my procedure is TOTALLY not predicatable. There are 3 possible endings to tomorrow: 1) they poke around, figure out the problem, come out without any problem and I can take medication to fix things. 2) They poke around, realize they can fix the issue while they're in there, and fix it. 3) They poke around, realize I'm totally fucked, and put in a pacemaker at the last minute. I won't know what happened until I wake up after the procedure. I might have a pacemaker. I just have to wait and see.

So basically I'm super freaked out. My sweet boyfriend came down for the week to help take care of me with my parents. He bought me cupcakes and roses this weekend because I was freaking out about everything (collective awww!) Hopefully it will be OK.... I'll just sit around in my pink polka dotted robe watching movies for a week! Anyway, wish me luck.

Cute oufits I wore while I wasn't updating my blog

Oh geez, where do I begin. Merry Christmas? Happy New Year? Happy 20th birthday to me? Yes, I am now 20! Yay! I'm also dating a really super sweet amazing guy now - I am OFFICIALLY douchebag free - and my classes this semester are 90% fashion related so that's SUPER fun. Of course, I'm insanely busy and blogging has fallen to the bottom of my priorities list - don't feel bad though, lots of other things are down there too! Like, showering. Homework. Etc. Although all of these things are great, I am actually getting heart surgery this Friday to examine my Wolff Parkinson White disease, an electrical issue that I was apparently born with although NOBODY NOTICED IT EVER until now. Fail. So I have to awkwardly inform my teachers that I won't be in class for a week recovering, then pretend like it's no big deal when everyone gets really concerned because lets be honest, it's a HUGE deal, but I'm sick of crying all over the place about it (this is where superboyfriend comes into play! He bought me roses and cupcakes yesterday, for no reason other than that I was feeling down!!! ^_^)

Anyway, since I abandoned you all for so long, and probably will again, here are some super cute outfits I wore recently over break and such. They are relevant to your abandonment because frankly, I prefer looking at pictures of people's outfits to reading whatever they have to say anyway, so if you're anything like me, you will enjoy this.


As you can see I am in love with tights. And finally, a pic of me and some of my friends at my 20s Flapper themed birthday party!

Regarding Pink Hair.

My hair is, more or less, half pink. It has been this way for a while now, and I don't see it changing anytime soon. I get a lot of reactions to my pink hair - almost always positive - and a lot of curious questions about it. So I thought I'd take this time to answer some of the most frequently asked questions, as well as picwhore all of my pinkhaired history.

Question: When did you first dye your hair pink?
Answer: I first put pink in my hair the summer before my freshman year of college (I'm a junior now). I dyed the tips pink. They lasted for about a year before, sadly, breaking off entirely. Turns out damaging your tips is not a lasting solution for wanting pink in your hair. I moved on to bigger and better things soon after my freshman year, adding more and more highlights (I call them, cleverly, pinklights).

Question: What dyes have you used? Which is your favorite?
Answer: First I used an N'RAGE one step bleach/dye kit, which was great and lasted several months. Then I tried to keep my pink bright with manic panic cotton candy pink, which lasted about a week and a half before fading. Next I used Special Effects Atomic Pink which tided me over for about a year, with touchups once a month. Now I'm using Special Effects Virgin Rose, which starts out more red than pink but fades into a brilliant fuschia and lasts much longer than any dye I've used yet! I must say it's definetly my favorite to date.

Question: Do people respond to your hair? What are the best and worst repsonses you've received?
Answer: More people than you'd think respond to my hair! I get loads of compliments on it from chicks my age, and smiles of solidarity from other pinkheads. I also get some unexpected compliments: once, while I was in a Starbucks with my dad, a middle aged businessman approached us and told me he loved my hair. I was so flattered - even corporate dudes love my hair! I was also complimented on it by my wonderful previous employers at http://vibrantnation.com during the interview proccess. It seems to help me get creative, fun jobs rather than hurt me! To date the only negative reaction to my hair was when I worked at Olive Garden. I was a hostess, and apparently sat an elderly couple. Their waitress came up to me and informed me that all they could talk about was my hair, how it was a disgrace, how Olive Garden was supposed to be a "high class establishment" and people with pink hair belonged in "Steak and Shake," and how a complaint to management was imminent. Oddly, my hair was up at the time, and my pink was not even that visible! Happily, I was not fired, and received no further complaints about my hair.

Question: What do your parents think about your hair?
Answer: My poor parents learned long ago to give up any semblance of control over my hair. One time when I was in 7th grade I got in trouble for giving myself an impromptu haircut in the bathroom (to the principal's horror, my mom reasoned that it would grow back and did not ground me). Throughout high school I tried blonde, red/purple, and black. My senior year of high school my mother bribed me to keep my hair naturally colored (which I did - and promptly pink'd it after graduation!) I don't think my parents mind my pink hair. My dad sees it as a sign of my creativity and often uses it as an anecdote when bragging about me to various business associates. My mom (who went to burning man this year, props to her!) told me she was considering dying her own hair pink to match her new pink laptop. My sister, however, wants me to dye it back to brown for her wedding. Boo.


Question: How often do you have to dye it? Is it difficult to maintain?
Answer: I typically dye it about once a month. In between dyes it fades to a peachy blonde color, especially at my roots where I use the most shampoo. I also have to bleach my roots ever 6 months or so to avoid that nasty grown-out look. In general, re-dying is no big deal. I have a stockpile of latex gloves and aluminum foil, and I just chill with foil on my head for about 3 hours before rinsing my hair in the shower. It can stain if you're not careful, so I try to be careful! I also try to be gentle with my hair because the pink parts are bleached, and they're a bit more damaged than the other parts of my hair. Other than that it's not too bad at all.

Question: has pink hair affected your self-image at all?

Answer: Pink hair has definetly boosted my self esteem. I have a tendency to think people are judging me if they look at me, and before I had pink hair, I would have a mini freakout trying to figure out what on earth they were staring out. Now, it's obvious - they're looking at my bright pink hair! Having pink hair makes me feel more adventurous, creative, and fashionable, even on the days where I wear sweats and jeans. It helps me feel glamorous and girly at the same time. It makes me happy when I see it all bright in the mirror - after all, pink is my favorite color! (Have you noticed?) I don't think I'll be getting rid of it for a long time - it's definetly become a part of my identity now. I would be sad without it!

Caffiene is my god

So I'm taking a quick, jittery break from studying. By the way, if anyone wants to know about marginal propensity to consume or save, real GDP, aggregate demand or supply and/or disposable income, ask me, since I now understand it enough to feel relatively confident about my midterm tomorrow. Does anyone else love caffiene this much? Seriously. Best invention ever. Anyway so I'm officially scheduling in time to work for OmgLia since I'm not getting much done updating at 3am every night... from now on, Friday is OmgLia day. I will wake up early and report to work at the library, and work diligently until I am all caught up! Mostly for my benefit, but also for all those who are curious what tasks go into running a DIY shop from a dorm room, here is my To Do List for the next few Fridays:

1. Update Etsy/website with finished pictures (finished means cropped, resized, background whited out, and any contrast or color adjustments.)

a) Alice in Wonderland Line (preview to the left)
b) New stud earrings
c) Necklaces, earrings and clearance updates (need to move old items to clearance!)
d) Add new photoshoot pics to existing items


2. Advertising

• a) Set advertising budget, contact collected potential advertisers to purchase slots


• b) Write advertising code and page for OmgLia to bring in more advertising revenue


• c) Make new advertisement banner, whore it everywhere

3. Accounting

• a) finish updating 2009/2008 balance sheet using paypal, propay and income statement


• b) Add any values from receipts including post office fees, credit card purchases, etc


• c) Collect data from net income or loss per month


• d) all kinds of data analysis! (this part is only fun if you are a huge excel nerd, which I am!!)

4. Newsletter

• a) Depending on budget, purchase newsletter production company like Vertical Response


• b) Develop template for regular newsletters


• c) Set up a schedule for sending newsletters (Currently it's something like whenever I feel like it, which is not often enough to bring back many customers!)


• d) Create newsletters with original content, coupon codes, pictures, etc that people will actually read, not send to spam box, and perhaps even click on once in a while!

5. Blog

• a) Brainstorm blog posts based on polling various readers about what they want to read about. Create blog posts. Post regularly!


• b) Research ways to get more traffic to my blog (keywords?)


• c) Figure out how the hell to move this blog over to http://blog.omglia.com/ >.<

6. Etc

• a) using new site banner, design new bag toppers, etsy banner, link banners, and business cards.


• b) order more business cards


• c) Depending on budget, purchase Flickr account and upload as much as possible to it.


• d) take pictures of any leftover inventory to upload to site


• d) make more stuff (funny, you'd think this would be a more important one, but honestly with all the rest of the stuff I have to do, creating inventory is really NOT as prioritized as one would assume. They should tell you these things BEFORE you start your own DIY business!)

Anyway. So that's that. Now I shall return to studying. PS, note for all college students reading this: IF YOU HAVE NOT BEEN TO YOUR UNIVERSITY LIBRARY, VISIT IT ASAP. I've only recently made studying at the library a habit of mine, and I've noticed SUCH a change in productivity from when I tried to study (unsuccesfully) in my dorm room. Also, the resources of the IU library are absolutely staggering: everything from paid subscriptions to any online article I could ever want to read, to one-handed keyboards in case I break my arm, to printers capable of creating life-size posters, to ... well, books. They even have a cafe downstairs with SUSHI, and 5 floors of studying lounges. AWESOME. I'm making a library kit with all the neccessaries to take with me every day when I stop by here for HOURS. Ok. seriously, back to studying. And also my favorite picture of me from this weekend's photoshoot!

Dorm room pics!

I finally got my dorm tidied up and looking nice heres some pics

The actual color of dorm room is very pinkish, I covered the light with tissue paper to filter it . Also those are candy corn "christmas"lights sent by my mom as a hallowen present!

My bed, with my awesome rolly laptop table!
To see the rest of the pics, click here!

Halloween!

Halloween is just around the corner, and at Indiana University that's a HUGE deal. Aside from your standard drunken debauchery and an unusually high proportion of ridiculously skimpy clothing, Halloween is an awesome holiday to celebrate at college. For example, my dorm is hosting a Halloween Arts and Crafts Party, a Thriller Workshop - side note, fun fact about me: I was on a hip hop dance team in high school and we not only learned Thriller in all of its 13-minute long entirety, but we performed it every weekend for hours at The Baxter Avenue Morgue in Louisville! -- as well as a huge Halloween Dance, a Halloween Charity party for disavantaged kids and an in-dorm Haunted House. WHEW! In summation, my dorm is pretty much the best ever, and I luff it. *luffs dorm*

Anyway, the real question here is, what am I - and what are you - dressing up as this Halloween? By principle I tend to abstain from the obligatory skanky mcskankskank costuming that seems to flood the women's section of costume stores. I tend more towards literal costumes and the previous costumes I have worn were, on the whole, rather strange. Now that I am a fashion design major I feel like I should branch out to something interesting and perhaps a twinge more crafty than usual. My general intuition is to go to the Salvation Army, pick out something ridiculous, and make it into something awesome - but what should I look for? As an inside joke, my friends and I were all going to go as Little Britain characters and I was going to be Emily Howard, but frankly, nobody would get that reference at all (did any of you? yes? maybe? ....nobody?) and some of my friends might be in different states than me for Halloween anyway. So ... that leaves me with pretty much nothing. Help me come up with some ideas, dear readers!

Side note: check out the amazingawesomecrazycool Halloween jewelry at http://www.omglia.com/Halloween

Update from My Life

So I've totally been slacking on the blogging thing - sorry! What happened is I moved into college and got swept up in the world of homework, parties, socializing, and more homework! Luckily for me those are all extremely enjoyable things, so I haven't been missing the internet TOO much. My plan was to take some pictures of my dorm to show my blog, but then my camera broke - so I haven't been able to do that yet either! What I have done, is go to a lot of classes, meet a lot of new people, and make some awesome artwork. I'm majoring in Fashion Design and so I'm doing a lot of drawing and sketching, plus making two skirts right now for a fit model in my class, which is exciting! Boy I wish I could take pictures to show you all *mad* soon, hopefully. Anyway just thought I'd check in and let you faithful readers know that I haven't dropped off the face of the earth. In lieu of awesome dorm or fashion design pictures, here is my boyfriend Aaron creating some amazing artwork for my dorm:

I'll be updating soon with the new Halloween goodies for OmgLia.Com!

College Countdown: 3 weeks

So I'm returning to college the last week of August and, although I'm trying not to think about the daunting task of packing my apartment up and cramming all of my stuff back into a teeny dorm room (yes, I'm living in a dorm room again! Why? Well, it's convenient, and I don't know how to clean stuff on my own. Also, less space to tidy up) ... I'm really excited to head back to IU! Here are the classes I'm taking next semester:

AMID-F 211 - FASHION DES I: CONCEPTUALIZATN
I assume this means "Fashion Design 1: Conceptualization." This class is for Fashion Design students ONLY. *jumps up and down* I'm so excited! There's a lab AND a lecture. OOOOH. SUPER excited.

ASCS-Q 299 - JOB&INTRN STRAT LIB ART STDNTS
I think this has something to do with finding a job or w/e. Some required bullshit class, I'm sure. At least it only meets 8 weeks.

BUS-M 300 - INTRODUCTION TO MARKETING
I think I'll probably do very well in this class. It's only for Apparel Merchandising majors with Business Minors - like me! Business majors don't take it cuz they're special or whatever. *bitter* What? I didn't get in, I can be bitter.

ECON-E 202 - INTRO TO MACROECONOMICS
I managed to scrape by with a B in microeconomics last semester and swore never to draw another stupid graph or do another stupid contrary-to-common-sense-math problem again. Analysis I get; technical mathematical stuff makes me want to strangle small innocent children. Kill me. Kill me now.

ENG-L 204 - INTRODUCTION TO FICTION
Why do I have to take this? I tested out of English. I'm brilliant at English. I'm hoping I can drop this stupid for-credit-only class. I think I'm waitlisted anyway.

HPER-E 133 - FITNESS & JOGGING I
Ever heard of the freshman 15? How about the sophmore 15? Yeah. I'd like my high school body back, please.

SOC-S 100 - INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY
I took intro to anthropology my freshman year, but since I transferred schools my credits didn't fill up all the way and now I have to take practically the same class all over again. Oh well, it's only a 100 level so it shouldn't be too difficult. Maybe now that I'm an *upperclassman* I can bribe some freshies into giving me their notes, or something. *evil grin*

and there you have it. Bad news: classes start at 9:30 am Mon-Thurs (though, I've been waking up at 8am all summer for work so it won't be too big of a difference.) Good news: no classes on Fridays. Bad news: boyfriend and I have no idea what to do about the long distance thing, as he's been staying with me for the past 2 months. We're thinking a homeless shelter and/or a camper. No, seriously.

Worst Morning Evar

On August 4th, Louisville was hit with yet another freak storm (that makes 3 this year: freak wind storm, freak ice storm, freak rain storm, WHAT THE HELL). I had an absolutely awful day and I'd like to complain to all of my wonderful readers about it, even though it was like 3 days ago (clearly I'm still not over it). HERE'S HOW IT WENT DOWN.

* I woke up at 8am to pitch blackness, hail and thunderclaps
* the boyfriend begged me to call into work and spend the day cuddling, but like an idiot I decided work was more important (fatal mistake #1)
* realized I'd left my umbrella at work. (fatal mistake #2.) went outside with a towel over my head.
* Waded out to the parking lot to find that a tree limb had fallen on my car during the night.
* drove to work in pitch black rainy traffic
* realized my regular parking space is 4 blocks from my work and I didn't have an umbrella. (FACEPALM)
* I decided to find a parking space on the street. I realized I haven't parallel parked since I took my fucking drivers test. (fatal mistake #3). About killed myself trying to manage it, called my dad, who works a few blocks away, screaming I DON'T KNOW HOW TO PARK DOWNTOWN HOW DO YOU DO THIS CAN YOU COME DO THIS FOR ME???? In the end though I totally managed it, A+ for me.
* I walked across the street to my office, thinking I'd been all clever for parking so close. However during the proccess of walking this 30 or so feet, I ENTIRELY saturated my pants/socks/shoes with water, as well as getting a faceful of blowing rain despite the towel I was huddled underneath.
* when I finally managed to get across the fucking street dripping wet, I got to the office only for the other intern to tell me that no one else was even in yet. apparently all my coworkers had decided to do the sane thing and lay low until the storm let up somewhat

I spent the whole day in wet pants.

Cliffs:


On the bright side of things, it could've been much worse. The apartment across from mine was hit by lightening and burned down. You can watch the videos my boyfriend took of the fire on my Youtube. So, even though I was pissed off and wet all day, at least I dodged losing all of my belongings to a freak lightning accident by a good 50 or so feet.