Field Trip

Yesterday I went on a little field trip with the two Black & White editors to drive around Birmingham’s Westside and Westend. For those of you that won’t know anything about this area, it’s not a great one by any means, we didn’t leave the safety of our car. It was quite the eye opening experience, this part of Birmingham has been long forgotten and left to deteriorate. We drove through neighborhoods that I really, to be honest, had never been exposed to. We were doing this because as some research to find places that would be good photographic images to open the city’s eyes to what’s really going on in that side of town. It is only 10-15 min away from places I go to on a normal basis and it is a completely different world. Pretty crazy. I won’t say much about the story; you can watch for that in some of the upcoming issues of Black & White at bwcitypaper.com

And that was my field trip.

Thursday

One of the ad sales guys that I work with took me on a tour of the “neighborhood” of our office. Every once in a while he’ll walk down to a little place called Urban Standard, other people in the office have mentioned it too. And he has even gotten me a coke or a water or something when he goes. He got me a coke one day because I stuffed the envelopes for invoices and he hates doing it. Anyways I always hear about Urban Standard but didn’t know where it was. Thursday he was going out to Urban Standard and I asked him where it was, instead of just telling me, he invited me to go with him.

We walked to Urban Standard first and it is super cute, it is about 2 blocks down from our office. There are pieces of artwork hanging up everywhere for sale and they have a deli type menu, along with coffees, and sweets. It was such a cute little place. Then we crossed the street and went into Charm, it easily became a favorite. It’s a very reasonably priced jewelry store with lots of really unique items, I could have spent hours looking at all the jewelry pieces and I’m thinking that I’m going to get my bridesmaids gifts from there.  Another fun thing antique movie popcorn bags are what you leave with whatever cute thing you found in them. The owner was in and she was really sweet, we spent like 30 minutes in there just talking. Then lastly we stopped in What’s On Second? (here’s an article about it since it doesn’t have a website… What’s On Second Article )Another place I could easily spend hours in, it’s 3 levels and has all kinds of random things to look at.

The little walk down the block made for a good day at work, not that I ever have a bad day at work. I love it! 🙂

Hello October, Goodbye September

It has been quite the week and I have spent a lot of time at home this week and didn’t have much wifi so this post has been long time coming.

1. My job at Black & White is going great and I’m so excited about what is in store for me there.

2. School is going pretty great, I’m making good grades. The only class that is really proving to be a struggle is my newswriting class, it is a challenge but I’m sure that I’ll come away from it learning a lot more than when I started which is always a good thing.

3. We made a wedding decision. That is that the wedding will be here in Alabama. If it was in Missouri that would mean about 3/4 of any of the guests would have to travel 8 hours and find places to stay. It would make coming quite difficult for some and impossible for others. Many more decisions are in the works, and I feel like in a way were making progress. Planning this all out for me is very exciting … for Zach not so much but he’s a good sport with everything and helps where he can or maybe where he wants. Either way he’s helping and that’s what matters, right?

Zach worked a lot this week, close to if not 70 hours. And he was finally off for the weekend. We spent Saturday taking in SEC football. At about 7 yesterday morning I left and met Zach at Homewood to make the drive to Auburn for the football game at 11. Zach’s youngest sister was playing in the Auburn Honor Band which is a chance for high school students to play with the University’s band members in the halftime show. It was the first time I’d ever been to a football game of that size. I had a great time, even though I’m an Alabama fan. It was all in all a great experience and we had what I though were some pretty good seats too. After all that excitement in the afternoon we came back to WJ and went to watch the Alabama v. Florida game at Zach’s dad’s house. What we thought would be a good game to watched turned into kind of blowout. It was a good time though just all hanging out and watching the game.

Today has been spent resting and being lazy. We also went and played tennis with the Js (Zach’s brother Josh & his gf Jessica), went to Wal*Mart and came back to carve pumpkins. Mine is cleaned out now ready to be carved and Josh & Jessica finished theirs.

Its been a great week just a busy one. Next week I hope to find more time to blog. And then next weekend we’re all going camping. That will be a post in itself. I haven’t been camping since I was 4 or younger. So it will be an experience. 🙂

 

Black & White

As you all know I am now the intern for Black & White Birmingham’s City Paper. I started yesterday (Monday) afternoon. Currently, I’m working on going through the monthly calendar and making sure that all the contact information is correct. Which means that from 2-5 yesterday I was making calls on the phone and double checking websites. It’s a little job but someone has to do it and any chance I get at learning more about this business, I’m jumping on. I got to know one of my coworkers a little better and he gave me a rundown of the office. We actually sat and talked for probably 20 min or so. He is one of the ad salesman, and he said that he is notorious for getting people off track with talking. When I got off work at 5 he walked me to the alley beside the office where we can park because a couple of days before a girl had her purse snatched. All in all it was a great first afternoon there and I can’t wait to meet the rest of my coworkers and have more experiences of doing different things.

In other news check out the Gma & Papaisms tab … there’s a new one 🙂