In 2010 I ... designed wedding invitations

My former post-college roommate, Lisa, is getting married in September (at Target Field - cool, huh?) and asked me to design her wedding invitations. While it's a lot of work, it's so fun to be able to lend a hand on projects like this - and it's a nice change of pace to be designing for fun, not work.

So after a couple months of mock-ups, wordsmithing, finessing and proofing, I just received my actual invite in the mail today. How exciting!

Ooh, suspense!

This was a big project, with an enclosure to source, photo to size and print, velum overlay to design, three insertion cards (with the directions card ending up double-sided) and coordinating squeezing a return envelope in with all that! Thankfully Lisa had a pretty solid idea of what she was looking for, which made putting it all together that much easier.

We're off to Lisa's bachelorette party in Okoboji this weekend, and I know I'll be able to relax significantly more knowing these are complete!

In 2010 I ... turned 27.

Ah! Closer to 30 than ever before. I don't even know what to think about this. It's a scary thought, honestly. So to calm my nerves, I'm making a list of things to look forward to in my 27th year.

• Lisa's bachelorette weekend in Okoboji (July 16-18)
• Bastille Day at Barbette (July 18)
• Adam's wedding (July 23)
  
• The birth of Jessie's baby boy, Felix (July 24, hopefully!)
• Shooting Erin's wedding (July 24)
• The return of Music & Movies @ Loring (August 3)
  
• Sheila's return visit to Mpls (August 6)
  
• Labor Day weekend at the cabin with Nikki & Erin (September 3-6)
  
• Lisa's wedding (September 11)
  
• Columbus Day weekend visiting Sheila in Boston (October 8-11)
  

Okay, so that just covers off on the major, upcoming scheduled stuff. I'm certain there will also be:

• More boating
• Another tubing trip on Canon River
  
• Countless outdoor happy hours
  
• Many, many more shows (The Swell Season in July, possibly The National in August, Broken Social Scene in October, etc.)
  
• Several more bike rides
  

What else? What am I forgetting, friends? Help ease the elderly pain with thoughts of fun activities for the year!

In 2010 I ... promoted an outdoor concert

I really enjoy working in public/media relations. It's sort of competitive to see just how much coverage you can secure for a client, and it's really fun when you have something that sells itself as well as the annual Basilica Block Party. So for the 6th consecutive year, I spent months promoting the heck out of this fundraiser of a concert, which wrapped this weekend.

The two-day affair takes an incredible amount of dedication from countless people, a vast majority of whom, like me, volunteer their time. For me, it's a great way to stay connected to local media contacts, keep my pitching skills sharp and gain event experience. But it truly is a ton of work, so I roped in the PR-savvy Brooke to assist. After the way she unflinchingly handled the tattoo supporting role, I knew she'd have no problems with the block party.

So pitch we did, landing more than 35 segments in two days. Observe:

Co-chair Drew with Holly Wagner of WCCO-4

Co-chair Maggie with M.A. Rosko of FOX-9

Battle of the Bands winner hunter(HERO) with FOX-9 and KSTP-5

Fr. Bauer with KARE-11

A dreamy PR dream - all local TV stations reporting live on-site

Of course this doesn't factor in the weeks of pre-event coverage, or print and radio mentions, but TV coverage the days of the event seem to really impact event promotion, which equates to ticket sales. The ultimate gift for all of this work was Saturday night's sell-out crowd of 15,000.

Beyond all that, the media team managed to have quite a bit of fun, too:

Maggie, Brooke and Sally ... working hard or hardly working?

Drew, Maggie, Sally and Brooke recovering from a very early wake-up call

Crusin' in cart #6! Carts totally trump walkie-talkies.

Don't mess with the media/all-access passes. Thanks for the photo booth, Vita.mn!

Why we do it.

Thanks is in order to the entire media team, including B, Maggie, Drew, Sally, Angie, Jess, Hayley and of course Meghan and Emily.

25,000 people showed up to see Weezer, Spoon, Barenaked Ladies, The Avett Brothers (the best show of the weekend), V.V. Brown (amazing!), Ingrid Michaelson, Guster .... the list goes on. And I was lucky enough to be a part of it.