I love writing. Origins of Root Beer

I love writing and I'm pretty sure it runs in the family. My grandma is ever-creating new stories and family cookbooks and historical narratives of the valley our home is in. My mother's passion is research and she's working on a thesis alongside a book about divorce (recently she told me it may become two separate books, only more writing will tell).  I have taken to blogging, simply spewing out the random thoughts and experiences my life brings upon me. I guess I've done a little bit of research writing too. For each of us, it seems that we all move to the written word as an outlet for our (well mostly my) non-creativity in every other creative field.

Being home at the mountain house for the holidays, tucked away with little phone or internet access, sitting at the dining room table around which each member of my family is reading a different book, I realize how ingrained the love of words is in our family. Even my younger brother who mostly hated school most always has a book in his massive hands (he is 6'5" you know).

When we were in the car on the way down I-70 (beautiful scenic highway) to get here, my sister Nicole (8 years old) asked me why the called root beer root beer. I had no idea, nor did anyone in the car, but we decided (well mostly I encouraged) that it would be fun to do a research study with the whole family to see if anyone really knew much about root beer, it's ingredients, or its origin than compare what people know to what information we could find online.  With three simple research questions (Why do they call Root Beer, Root Beer? What do you think it's ingredients are? How is it made?) Nicole conducted and I transcribed interviews with 13 of the family members at the house.

What did we find?
1. Family agreed that root beer was probably called such because it was made from a root.
2. Original root beer did in fact come largely from a mixture of roots and spices (namely Sassafras) though currently Root Beer usually is made solely with artificial flavoring not stemming from anything root-like.
3. Root Beer was originally alcoholic (about 2%) and was often used to treat sore throats and mouth sores.
4. The drink was originally sold as a powder, and gained popularity during prohibition.

Resources
Wisegeek.com
Wikipedia

I guess that what it comes down to is that our family has a love of words and we particularly like them when they come in the form of research.

Expect much more writing from me.

Website on the way

I've decided, during my vast amount of free time, that I need to get a real live up-and-running website. A one-stop shop for the various blog rambling, resume posting, link sharing stuff that I now spend my time doing in between and alongside the job hunt that is lasting an eternity. It hasn't been created yet, but be prepared for something that is awesome (and hopefully somewhat useful).

Now, there are lots of ways one can create a website these days. I'd say that I've more or less used wonderful blogger.com for the last few years to represent and share what my life is like online. Back in high school one of my favorite teachers, Mr. Stevenson, required us to create a personal portfolio of our work during his Computer Aided Drafting course. My drafting work was horrible (I am not clever when it comes to numbers, math, or details) but the idea of a digital collection of work has stuck with me as something I'd sometime get around to creating.

So now, rather than my sending out a new blog address every time my life takes another direction (yes, I've somewhat centralized my 3 blogs by directing them all through stephusry.blogger.com) this will include Everything stephusry digital; CV, blog, twitter, facebook current pictures and all).  I'm really pretty excited about it and I'm doing much research to learn my way around the web-building worlds. I'm going through the tutorials for Adobe Dreamweaver, and doing all I can to learn about HTML and CSS so that I really know what I'm doing even though the program will help me with most things. I'm also learning much about purchasing a domain and web host. Here is a great article that I found hugely helpful regarding web hosting!

I'm also searching the web for design ideas to mold my sight after.  I'm very very fortunate to be living with an excellent artist and graphic designer who will help my non-creative eye make the sight look good while I develop the surely-awesome content.  I'm hoping it will be up and running by the new year...if it's interesting I'll be sharing my trials and tribulations as I work my way through its creation. Input will be appreciated!

PO Box Woes

When I moved back to San Diego I knew I wasn't going to be signing a rental agreement anytime soon and I knew Aliina, my friend who had acquired my mail all summer, was moving. Meaning I needed to find a good place to have my mail routed to so I could receive it during this period of turbulent living.

Of course! I realized one day. I'll just open a PO box and I won't have to worry about all the moves and randomness and I can get all the formidable loan payment statements that I knew would soon be coming my way.

Turns out thought that you can't open a PO Box without a physical address, proved by not only a drivers license but also with something official like a voters address registration confirmation or a rental agreement. They make it look very easy, but without an address it's not! I'm sorry, but what in the world is the point of a PO box if you have a stable address?

This of course caused me great strife, I had no idea where I'd be in the next days, let alone months. I definitely had no rental agreement or permanent address. I was out of luck and my mail was going to be lost in mail land forever.

To my good fortune I miraculously received a voter registration address verification days after my first attempt at the PO box (sent from friend Aliina to address of friend who's couch I slept on at the time), and it verified my old address, allowing me the info I needed to open a PO box! So I went with it. It's not terribly legitimate, but truly, I need a PO box because I don't have an address of my own and I bet, especially in this economy, that there are a few people with the similar issue. Mail is kind of one of those necessary evils and while I've done every possible thing I can to get all my mail virtually, banks particularly are awfully old school and won't allow electronic statements or forms..its all via snail mail, which I believe is a waste of paper and time.

So yes, I am receiving my mail at a PO Box these days, and though I don't have an address of my own otherwise I am writing it on letters and receiving mail much to my satisfaction.

Snow

I forgot what it's like to live in snow. It's cold mostly, and often a pain as far as getting places or doing anything outdoors. It's not so bad so far...but I spend most of my time in the house and I get into the car which is parked in a heated garage. So really I only have to deal with it if and when I leave the house: not something that happens often.

Yesterday we got quite a storm, about a foot and a half worth of snow came down! Today it's about 8 degrees outside and even the Minnesota snow plows haven't been able to keep up as roads are still closed at noon today. (Minneapolis is renowned for its snow removal excellence). If you've watched the news, you may have also seen that the roof of the Metrodome (Minneapolis football stadium) broke, spilling tons of snow into the arena and effectively ending the home season of the local NFL team.  Like I said, lots of snow.

I'm fortunate to not have to interact with the snow much from indoors, but yesterday while the wind was still howling Tom and his housemate Mark decided to brave the outdoors and plow the driveway. Now, growing up in Colorado we'd usually do this by piling on the layers and going out in force with shovels. But these boys have a toy.  It's a riding lawnmower which, by removing the blade and adding a contraption to the front becomes a snowplow! Here's the picture I took from my blankets inside...

The worst thing about the snow here is that it's so dry that you can't make a good snowman, or snowball for that matter. Oh, and did I mention that it's really cold?

Twitter Networking

Since the launch of Twitter, I was skeptical of its worth. Constant status updates? That to me just seemed like a way for people to distract themselves from their mundane daily existence or to ramble because they don't have people to share their lives with. You see, I really wasn't a fan.  Does it give these people more personal worth to write about the way their lettuce looked on their lunchtime sandwich? I don't know, but I wasn't really buying into it. Updating my status on Facebook once every few weeks seemed like plenty of insight for my random network of friends to check in with my life.

And then I found businesses on Twitter. Businesses who offered special deals to followers, individuals who offered advice, airlines who gave updates on fare sales or weather delay situations. These Tweets are what helped me to begin to understand and appreciate Twitter. Now, Twitter is my source for news headlines throughout the day, job leads while I hunt for employment and so much more!

And...Twitter is how I found out about the organization Minnesota Women in Communications and Marketing, which lead me to attend my first networking event in Minneapolis since I arrived here.

Held at the restaurant Trygs in southwest Minneapolis, the event was held in a very thin rectangular room, compacting all of us together in a small space. Sold out at twenty attendees, the event was an ideal size for meeting and speaking with pretty much everyone in attendance. Most of the women there had jobs, though a few of us were looking. After ordering drinks and snacking on sliders and veggies the presentation began, featuring the Best Buy WOLF program, designed especially for women leaders inside Best Buy. The program was interesting and the presenter  enthusiastic, but above all it was a great opportunity for me to see how women professionals come together here in the Twin Cities.

Everyone that I spoke with at the event was extremely helpful, and I walked away with business cards for a temp agency that specializes in finding temporary employees for marketing companies in the area, a woman who's good friend started a company that does a cross of identity and brand development (she emailed me with his contact information the next day), and even the card of a suggested hair stylist that one of the women suggested I visit if I were looking for a good haircut. It was a great way to meet people and to get a better idea of the local job market-and even a few "ins" in the industry.

Now, do I want to go into marketing? Not particularly-I am not one to try to encourage American's to purchase more things they never really wanted and will never actually need and will eventually just throw away at some point anyway (I'm quite the minimalist if you didn't know) but I do believe some experience in brand development could help me in what I actually want to do with my life (or what I think I want to do for now), so while I'm surrounded by a community that has lots of marketing and communications I may as well learn a few tricks of the trade.

If you're interested in using Twitter, it's good to know what you're looking to get out of it. For me, my main interests are news, jobs, job search strategies, travel deals and advice, and yoga.  For Minneapolis and jobs, I started by finding the twitter feeds a few big companies in the area. Then I merely went through the people/companies they follow and looked at the bio's of each of those to see if they might be of interest to me. If so, I followed them. With this strategy, I started "following" about 30 new companies, 10 of whom have posted job opportunities in the last few weeks, 7 of which I applied for. And they keep going. Particularly in the communications field Twitter has been great.

So really, Twitter has been pretty helpful for me and I fully intend to keep using it. I wouldn't really suggest that you follow me (I simply communicate with a few friends who post to it and don't post much content of interest myself, so I'd never follow me) but think of some companies you are interested in knowing more about and follow them, and maybe a few of their followers.  Maybe you'll find a job you think I could apply to :)

30 degrees is warm

As I said before, living couch to couch was great for a while, but I was ready to hang up my clothes and have all the food I like eating in the refridgerator.

Lucky for me, another friend came to the rescue, inviting me to share his home in Minnesota while I continue with this post-grad job hunt.  So, here I am now, in Minneapolis, Minnesota spending my days editing and re-writing cover letters and resumes, sending them on to companies, and just really hoping that something will come to fruit soon.  In the meantime, I've also been practicing a lot of yoga, reading, and devising a few internet-based ideas that, once I find an unemployed friend who is awesome at website engineering, I think could really be something amazing.

Of utmost importance is the fact that I am still adventuring to my hearts extent. Minneapolis is freezing (since I arrived 2 weeks ago we've been excited for a high of 30) cold, but I've never been here and it's actually a very interesting and dynamic city thus far. I've found a yoga studio, One Yoga, that is non-profit and allows members to pay on an income based scale. I got to go visit SkillsUSA friends in Kansas City for Thanksgiving. And the house I'm living in has a workout room which gives me plenty of activity to do even though I can't go for a run outside.  I'd say that life is pretty good considering I'm unemployed.  But, as my friend Samantha brought to my attention, unemployment should be taken advantage of, hence I consider myself more in a period of Funemployment. I'm getting the most out of all this free time that I can including trying to learn some website design/programming, free online Spanish lessons, and lots of reading.

Tonight I'll be going to a networking event through MNWC (Minneapolis Women in Marketing and Communications) and I've followed more companies around the country on Twitter than I can keep up with some days. The great thing though is that I'm finding lots of interesting jobs, now it's just a point of getting hired for one of them!

I'm also going to be starting my own website, through which my blogs will be available and my professional and personal stuff (resume, work examples, blogs, photos, fun stuff too). Yet another thing I first need to learn to do before I can make it happen. But it's coming soon, promise.


Of course, if you know of a job that may suit me I'd be very happy to become employed (I do get bored rather often) but for now I'm very fortunate to have a roof over my head and wonderful friends supporting me along my journey.  Stay in tune with this blog to see what I'm up to while I search for a job and figure out life after college!

I've been home a while now...

I returned from Europe with many stories and some amazing inner peace.  I spent the last part of my trip on a small family farm in Avolasca, helping with the harvest and learning to make wine. I took a quick 24 hour trip to Interlaken and was amazed by the jutting mountains and numerous waterfalls. Then a plane ride from Milan took me back to London where my journey began. I finished off the trip with four English boys in a few British pubs, who I've managed to keep long-distance friendships with for three years now and I don't see them coming to an end anytime soon.

Then a long flight brought me back to the US, where I waited in LAX until I caught a flight to join my friend Tom for 2 weeks of Tahoe adventures, including a wedding for his best friend.

That brought me back to San Diego where, though I was living on a different friends' couch each week, I was the most settled I'd been in approximately four months.  I first arrived back in San Diego, the original home of Sun God, the UCSD version of a 'flat stanley' that I took with me as I traversed Europe, on the 13th of October.

My first week back in San Diego, I met with numerous friends, mentors, and acquaintances sharing details about my trip and trying to finalize small details like paying a $5 fee so that the university would send me my diploma.  Oh, and I began the mission that is still driving me today, my post-graduation job hunt.

A week into my return, miraculous fortune struck me and I was hired by the UCSD Alumni Association to work on a 50th Anniversary book project. For the next 7 weeks, I would be working at the Alumni Association on a book of images that was supposed to be published in coordination with the university's Founder's Day celebration.  I contacted departments, some of the first faculty of the school, learned how to acquire a copyright and ISBN for a book, and wrote and edited long captions, an index, and a photographers list.  It was an amazing project and I learned a LOT while doing it. It also helped that I'm kind of a UCSD fanatic, I mean, I did bring a miniature Sun God with me everywhere I went for my trip across Europe...so what i'm saying is that the project was perfect for me. I got to bring to light many of the traditions, myths and people who helped to make the university what it is today.

But during all of this, I was still living on a new couch each week. And I'm so fortunate that I could even do this, it is definitely thanks primarily to the wonderful, amazing friendships that I was fortunate to develop while at UCSD.  Unfortunately, one can only live on couches for so long. I wasn't eating many fruits or vegetables (what could I have done, transported a mini-fridge of all my food each time I switched couches?) and I must say the whole living out of a backpack thing had gotten old after 5 months (especially now that I was wearing business clothes to work, ironing was a pain!)  So after about a month and a half, I took another opportunity, and to the winter I went!