Shhh, don't tell

Maybe you saw photos of the blizzard in Denver this week? Well this is what it looks like 60 miles south.


Guys, this place is awesome.

Dance Dance Revolution

I can't fully express the depth of my obsession with this song back in the fall of 2004. Then the video came out and my love for it grew even deeper. Everything about it is so charming, it was the perfect thing to roll through my iPod on a clear, cold Friday.

Hey Thanks!

Dear Married People:

You don't.

KC: so FNL was awesome, i'm making my favorite spaghetti, listening to Otis and anticipating a funny 30 rock in half an hour. Does a cold winter night get any better????
26 minutes ago · Comment · Like

DD :A husband for ya would make it better, right? ;)
23 minutes ago · Delete

Thanks,

Single People

Why the Face?

I have a slightly broken heart tonight. Season Four of Friday Night Lights premiered tonight and I don't know a soul with Direct TV. It's hard for me to be rational about how much I love this show. I rewatched the first season this summer after forcing my friend Traci to watch the pilot with me one night (her Facebook status today? FNL. I'm good.) and I just cried my way through it. The writing is great, the acting is fabulous and it's just so gosh darn pretty to watch.

My rock star friend Rudy is feverishly searching for places to download the thing but I'll admit, when I found just this clip of the credits on YouTube, I might have gotten a tear.

Dry

You know how sometimes you go to YouTube to look up an old Boyz II Men song your friend Natalie had as her gchat tag today and then 25 minutes later you are walking through the back catalogue of New Edition? What did we all do before the internet?

The enabling is disabled on YouTube but this song is just killing me right now. I got New Edition's Greatest Hits from one of those Columbia "get 12 free now and buy one someday" specials when I was a senior in high school. When my parents let me paint my bedroom (my OWN bedroom) I listened to that and He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper by DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince over and over for days on end. A year later my friend Brandon, who I had an insane crush on at the time, came over to my college apartment and declared those two the only things worth listening to in my room.

So tonight I'm watching these old videos (wow, I know every word to "Poison"-miss her kiss her love her) and loving my funny little suburban Salt Lake 17 year old self and her R&B phase.

Bloom

It's almost November and I've been in Colorado for a little over a month now. That's not very long but somehow it feels like I left Boston about a million years ago.

I'm sitting in the living room watching snow fall outside the window and it's making me laugh. Over Christmas last year my sister and I were sitting her apartment during one of the many nasty storms Utah got over the holidays and she said something about how much she loved to watch snow fall. I was jealous that my time in Boston was turning me into a snow hater. Maybe it was that I always got jolted from the endless sunshine of Huntington Beach to gloom and doom on the East Coast but I just loathed the winter and all it's evidence. It was dark and cold and it just seemed to go on and on and on.

So it's funny to me that here I am, sitting in the living room watching the snow fall and listening to Patty Griffin, and everything feels soft and peaceful.

Which brings me to something I've been thinking about a lot this last month. You know that generally good advice that we choose the way we react to things and that it's up to us to make the best of whatever is going on in life? Well I generally believe that. I also generally believe that sometimes there are points in our lives that things just flat out suck. And we can choose not to let it swallow us whole and we can choose to have faith that it will get better and we can even choose to try to slap a smile on our Facebook photos while it's happening. But there is a big difference between grinning and bearing it and truly grinning. I felt that in the Spring when I switched from the job that was sucking my soul to the one that was actually pretty great. It was like that moment when the cold medicine kicks in and you think-why didn't I take that an hour ago?? Multiply that by like a thousand and that's how I've felt the last six weeks. Like the first gulp of air when you've been holding your breath underwater. Even the last six months in Boston I kept thinking that I was so lucky to have been able to change jobs and I was doing something fun and learning this new sport-but I lived in a city I was done with and knew that I didn't want to be with the company long term. I did all the things I would have advised a friend to do in the same situation-I bought cookbooks and hung out with friends and wrote and joined a gym that made me more excited to go, I finally got my bike ready to really ride. I chose to be happy. But despite all my efforts, life was kind of in a holding pattern there for awhile. The day I got an email from an old friend saying, "hey I think there is a good opening at the USOC, do you want to give it a try?" my first thought was-I'm only five months into this new job, would this be me just running away? Fortunately that thought was trumped by one of my life mottos which is "new opportunities are worth exploring." (although that is the same motto that made me tell that recruiter that yes, although I explicitly said don't ever come to me with a job on the East Coast, especially not Boston, I would LOVE to apply for a job at a tiny little brand with no money that I will hate! So the system is not foolproof I suppose!)

So I explored and two months later I'm happier then I can remember being in years. And it's not because this place is perfect-Colorado Springs is SMALL, and there are no single mormon boys to speak of and I have to drive to Denver if I want to shop the J. Crew sale rack or go to a show. But my job makes me happy every single day and yesterday I rode my bike on mountain roads and a guy who trains Olympians is writing a weight lifting program for me. Life is good. Really, really good.

So the fact is that two years ago I was feeling restless and bored even though I had a good job and a beach in my front yard. It took some freaky twists but now here I am in a city that has effortlessly hooked me at a company I didn't even dare put on my dream lists back then because it seemed so out of reach. It's ok once in awhile to choose to be unhappy or bored or sad. My firm belief is that feeling that way is no way to live, but sometimes it's the only thing that will jolt us into action. I think we can Pollyanna ourselves into staying in something that just isn't good enough-a job or a relationship or a habit. Nobody tells you to ignore your body when it says it's thirsty or tired, why ignore your heart when it says it's unhappy?

I'll get off my soap box now-the snow is still going strong and I have to find my friend Damian's obscenely good hot chocolate recipe. I do love a snowy day!

Actor Announcement

I love it when my friends do cool things because then I get to brag about how I have cool friends.

This is my friend Dave. He is terribly talented both in front of and behind the camera. Look at him tell off that impatient cake cutter! **sidenote, these Intel commercials are really funny. Great campaign.

Congrats Dave!!!

Danger Zone

I took a carload of Air Force Academy cadets back to campus after church yesterday. Please note that if you are taking people back to a military installation you should NOT squeeze four passengers into a three seatbelt backseat. The guards tend to frown on such a situation.

Fortunately I was able to do some shuffling and got all the little freshman safely to the dorms and then stopped to check out the B-52 on display on campus.

My pops was in the Air Force before I was born so I called him and he told me a little about the history of the B-52. This particulary plane is Diamond Lil and she flew from 1957 to 1983. She is absolutely massive-hard to tell in a photo just how big the thing is. And if you are a person who is fascinated by the things humans have invented-the fact that such a thing can FLY kind of blows my mind.

A nice little Sunday afternoon field trip.

Calling all Teachers/PTA Moms

One of the really fun parts of my job is that I will be running Team Processing before the Games in February. Every single US athlete will come through our center to pick up all the fun stuff they get for making the team. They'll spend a few hours trying on clothes, getting their Opening Ceremonies outfit altered, getting their "yearbook" photos taken and sending all the clothes they brought with them home because they just got super hooked up.

We thought it would be really fun to get school kids across the country to write "Good Luck" cards and posters to the athletes that we can post in the Team Processing venue. If you are a teacher or a parent who would like to have your child's class participate, you can leave your contact info in a comment or email me at katieclifford(at)gmail(dot)com. I'd love to have you guys play with us!

She's a Libra

I have a "I'm 33 today and trying not to freak out about it" post that I will get to later this week. But today I have to give a little blog love to my mother. She gave birth to me 33 years ago and continues to have to do motherly duties far beyond what I'm sure she ever imagined.

My last three months at PUMA I was working on a big exciting endorsement deal and my mom had heard me talk A LOT about the kid we were signing and how much I had enjoyed working with his family on the deal. He's a great golfer and you'll definitely be hearing his name now that he has gone pro. He's also a smart, fun, down to earth guy with a tight, supportive family. They were really good people and although I was beyond thrilled when my current job opportunity came along, leaving just as we were finishing up getting this kid signed was disappointing.

My sneaky mother knew that a friend of mine would be taking the photos at the official signing annoucement after I had left so she tracked him down and got his help doing this:



A framed version of it showed up at my house last night and pretty much made my whole month. Thanks momma bird.

p.s. These little weasels appeared in my inbox this morning. So yeah, good birthday.

It Takes Two

My nephews got a rare chance to hang out this weekend. I can't believe I share some genes with these little stinks! If I ever have any kids I hope they end up this adorable.

Closer

I think maybe my brain is too full of new things and it's inhibiting my ability to write anything worthwhile! It dawned on me the other day that while this is my fifth move in seven years, it's been a long time since a move meant learning a new city and making new friends. It's somewhat exhausting. And exciting too. Work has been really wonderful but there is a lot to process there as well. So I have a lot I want to write about but I'm having trouble getting it out. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, I heard a song this weekend that I've had on repeat pretty much ever since. The lyrics are pretty darn sweet.

No Sleep 'til Brooklyn

I've been in Vancouver all week on a site visit for the Games. They are 128 days away. I'm exhausted. But I am having SO MUCH FUN AT MY NEW JOB.

More to come.

One

I had lunch today with two ridiculously cool girls from the Marketing department at work. They were in town from our New York office. One just moved from San Francisco and the other one has been in New York for 11 years. The three of us are all in our thirties and all have pretty cool career experiences under our belts. Between us we have lived in three of the biggest cities in the country. What do you think we talked about?

Well work. Obviously. And we are all new to the Committee so we talked about our old jobs and what we like to do in our spare time.

But of course we talked about boys. And dating. And I was looking at these two really cute, confident, successful women and I thought to myself-men are stupid.

Just kidding! I don't think men are stupid. I just think that I'm about to turn 33 and it's comforting to know that I'm in pretty fabulous single girl company.