Sayonara, 2011

2011 definitely had some great highlights, but I don't know if I have ever been more excited to see a new year begin than I am right now.

In May, I hopped on a plane and headed overseas again with Doug again, and this time Marek got to join us. We all had so much fun: Barcelona, Madrid, Granada, Sevilla and Segovia.

Definitely one of the bigger shifts this year was my job change - going from Account Executive at Jones Public Relations - to now being the Director of Social Media at VI Marketing and Branding. While I still work in communications and in downtown Oklahoma City, it is definitely more of a change than it sounds. I now strictly work in social media (which has been a love of mine for years).

The NBA also had a big scare of locking out for the entire season until an agreement was made late - starting opening day 2 months later (on Christmas Day). In the end, the NBA will only miss 16 games in what will be a very quick and condensed 66 games. This works out well for the Thunder as they are young with plenty of energy to play that many games in a short span. Also, this just happened last night ( Durant buzzer beater )


Each year I look forward to going to the Flaming Lips concert for New Year's Eve but it looks like that will no longer happen. I waited a little long on getting tickets and with the higher rate this year ($100 and up), I doubt I will get to ring in the new year with giant balloons, lasers, confetti and thousands of Lips fans that are more likely hugging because they are high and not because of the New Year festivities. That has been, however, one of my favorite night's all year and a tradition I am sad to see end, but I have never been able to not enjoy myself when I want to, this New Year's Eve will be no different.

This year, Mike and I bought a storage unit (just like the show Storage Wars) and had a garage sale to get rid of all the crap that was in it. It was a great experience and something I wouldn't mind doing again, as long as we buy a unit that is smaller and less expensive. We ended up paying bout $790 for the unit and brought in around $1500 at our garage sale. Not bad at all but moving the wall to wall unit and having a two-day garage sale might not have been worth it.

Also this year, Marek decided she was going to start making everything possible including pillows, scarves, gloves, maps, etc. and sold so much of it to local people which really worked out great for her and made a lot of people really happy (and gave lots of them great Christmas gift ideas as well). She also entered a craft show and sold items all day long. I hope this is something that she continues to do as she is great at it and loves to do it as well. She also got her Masters in December, what can't she do??

In Oklahoma City, Project 180 is taking over downtown in all areas regarding streets, sidewalks and intersections but the good news in downtown is that the Myriad Gardens have been completely renovated, the Devon Tower was topped off, Sandridge leveled about 2 blocks of buildings, the Aloft Hotel broke ground and the LEVEL Apartments are just about completed in Deep Deuce and the Skydance pedestrian bridge was just completed over the soon-to-be-open new I-40.

Looking back on worldly historical events in 2011: the ones that stad out to me the most would be th Occupy Wall Street protests, Congresswoman Giffords involved in a failed assassination attempt, Fidel Castro resigned, Prince William got married in the most ridiculously media frenzied event I've ever seen, Oprah Winfrey retired, Osama Bin Laden was murdered, Muammar Gadaffi was murdered, Kim Jong Il died, and a wild ride of rise and falls of GOP candidates including Romney, Cain, Perry and now Newt head into the Iowa Caucus.

Just thinking about this past year is exhausting.

2012, you better dominate.