Week eight of #QuarantineLife. Yep, it’s May 2020 and in New York state we are in week 8 of the #stayhome #staysafe orders. These times are challenging. I have a positive outlook. Even in challenging times, I seek out things that make me happy. Normally, that is having great meetings with clients, hanging out with friends, traveling, going out to restaurants and spending time with my family attending sporting events of a niece or nephew or some other celebration. These days I’m looking at everything and trying to see the positive in it! In the past few weeks, the weather has gotten nicer, with sunshine and spring in the air. Now is the time to discover and celebrate things that make me happy and bring JOY! In this post I will share four things I am doing these days that make me happy and are bringing me JOY.
Growing up I watched David Letterman. I used to love his segment where he ran down a top ten list. Thanks Dave!
Here goes: my top 4 to-do list for May 2020….
4 – Get outside, enjoy Spring
3 – Prancercise around the neighborhood
2 – Not-so-serious video chats with co-workers
1 – Set up a College Pals Virtual Happy Hour
4 – Get outside, look for signs of Spring
During my walks around the 518 I often stop to smell the roses. When I think about it, I mostly stop after a long uphill, when I really just need to catch my breath. But regardless of why, I have been enjoying discovering flowering trees and flowers along my route. There are parks and plantings even in the heart of downtown, if you look, you too will see them! The past week has been fabulous! The sun is shining, the trees are blooming, flowers are abundant. Typically, at this time Washington Park in Albany is home to Tulipfest. This year it is called Virtual Tulipfest. I have been doing my own tour of the tulips and other things in bloom. WOW, they are spectacular! Photos below will give a peek at some of the blooms from my walks this week….I wish you could smell them! #518Tuliptracker
3 – Go prancercising around the neighborhood
I am a beginner at Prancercise….still on level one for most of my walks. To keep pushing myself, I have added the arms of level four. I also do it without the ankle weights. I do love prancercising!!!!
For those of you who say, “wait, what is prancercising?” Oh, I am so glad you asked! I grabbed the official definition from the website. Joanna Rohrback, BHS, the owner of Prancercise LLC, defines prancercise as follows; “a springy, rhythmic way of moving forward, similar to a horse’s gait and is ideally induced by elation.”
Wow, now I am confident my prancercising is induced by elation.
I wish more people felt induced by elation like Joanna and me!
Please enjoy this video of Joanna doing a demo.
Next time you go for a walk, don’t just walk…PRANCERCISE you will laugh out loud and that is joyful!
2 – Video chats with co-workers
Entrepreneurs are all adapting to how to operate a business during #stayhome #staysafe. Today’s students are adapting to the virtual classroom and all the challenges that come with remote learning.
I am lucky enough to have two interns at KIRated. My interns wish to remain anonymous so I have opted to give them nicknames; I’ve got #theintern and #newintern
#theintern is 15 years old
#newintern is 9 years old
This is not a traditional #internship. I “hired” #theintern about 6 weeks ago. He is my nephew and a freshman in HS. Freshman have a lot of schoolwork. #theintern has been creating and designing social media posts every other week or so. So #theintern was my first hire.
The other day my sister in law mentioned that her 4th grader seems to have some really light days of remote learning work. She asked if I needed another intern. HUH? I never thought I’d be lucky enough to have two interns!
We had our first hangout call with the whole team last week!
Highlights from the first official Google hangout video chat;
#newintern had dirty knees (he was outside playing right before our mtg)
#theintern was hungry (he had eaten lunch but at 15, he is always hungry)
During a screen sharing tutorial #tiaboss somehow clicked on something that put a virtual viking helmet on my head. #newintern started giggling and said he didn’t think this would be what a business meeting would be like.
After magic, we got down to business…..the boys were very helpful designing and creating an upcoming social media post. The post is for “Eat What You Want Day” on 5.11.20. Both of the boys were really excited to include their favorite foods. Their choices include tacos, ribs, bbq chicken, fried calamari, a chocolate milkshake, a shirley temple, donuts and chocolate cake. #YUM
Check out this social media post and others they have worked on, at the kirated_design Instagram feed.
1 – Weekly College Pals Virtual Happy Hour
Some of my closest friends are friends I met during college.
There is a core four that started the HHs. I’ll call us the 4 OG’s. I love a good nickname and abbreviation in case you haven’t noticed. Anyway, the 4 OG’s have been connecting virtually over Zoom calls since the March #stayathome and Covid-19 changed all of our lives.
To honor everyone’s wishes, I will be talking about our participants using our college nicknames. I am Game Girl, in the 4 OG’s we also have Coiler, Ginger and P-Ness.
During quarantine life the four of us have been enjoying our virtual Happy Hour every Thursday night. It all started March 26th when we instituted a theme for each HH. First we started with a “Tiger King” theme.
After that we also had OTG (Off The Grid in case you don’t speak abbreviations…) athletics, tv/movie character and a “vintage SNL character” theme.
Once we started talking about SNL characters, we decided we needed to make it our mission to get Jimmy Fallon to join our Virtual Happy Hour. Why? Because one, Jimmy Fallon is a fellow St. Rose alum and two, the four OG’s were all at Jimmy Fallon’s first stand up gig when he performed at a College of St. Rose Beer Garden event.
The 4 OG’s have extended an open invitation for Jimmy Fallon to join our Happy Hour.
One of us somewhere has the VHS tape of the event, if only we knew someone who has a VCR! We are very hopeful that Jimmy will join in on a future CSR Virtual Happy Hour!
For example, our reach-outs to Jimmy include social media, snail mail and email inviting him to join us. We are interested in other ways of getting in touch, so if you know how to get in touch with Jimmy directly or have a cellphone number, please share it with us!
For the latest happy hour the 4 OGs decided we wanted to “share the laughter and the joy” with some of our other friends and roommates. So we invited some of our roommates from Lima, Maginn, Fontbonne and suite-mates from Alumni Hall to join. We planned a 1990’s theme Happy Hour.
Our HH was fabulous, lots of laughter, catching up on lives, reminiscing about some of our favorite memories and more!
As always, the four OGs have a plan!
We had many planning meetings before we expanded our group. That is to say, we are going to be methodical about our “invite list”. We are planners, we have a vision, we know how we want this to go. To further clarify, we already have a list going with other alum we want to connect with and invite to our Virtual Happy Hour.
We cherish these and all of our friendships. Cheers to long lost connections, laughter and storytelling.
Above all, we hope you will try to find the positive today and everyday. Moreover, we hope you will consider some of these tips to help you find your own joy! Leave a comment and let us know what you think!
Interested in reading more posts in this blog? To follow or see more from KIRated, check out a different post about Sonya DelPeral and Women Who Lead