#it's your regularly scheduled va joke

[cobaltfluff]

he eat cream puff

[joannaarobinson]

Day in the Life | Alyssa Glorioso

Welcome to our “Day in the Life” series! We feature wedding and event planners from around the world with many different levels of experience. If you would like to be featured, download our questionnaire here and email your responses and photos to info@plannerslounge.com. We are excited to feature Virginia wedding planner Alyssa Glorioso today!

Name: Alyssa Glorioso

Business Name & Location: Glorious Weddings & Events, Fredericksburg, VA

Years Working in the Event Industry: 6 years

Years Owning Your Event Planning Business: 2 years

Website: www.gloriousweddings.co

Business Facebook Page: Glorious Weddings & Events

Instagram: @gloriousweddingsevents

What is your typical day like?

Every day is a little different! I find my sweet spot is rising about 6:45am, as I like to ease into the day. Of course, I start with coffee and sometimes I run or practice yoga to kick off the day.

Typically, I plan out my priorities and plan with a walk around the block as I find walking and fresh air generates my thinking. I work from home but am very intentional about only working upstairs and leaving the downstairs for personal life. I typically take a quick lunch and try to eat away from the computer. My husband works from home most of the week so I have an office buddy!

I find my ideas run dry and my slowest productivity is between 1-4pm, so that is a great time for running errands, emails, or exercise if I didn’t get it done in the morning. Or, I slog through and wonder why I’m not getting much done!

I don’t always do this, but I’m trying to conclude the day with a recap of what I accomplished and laying out my top 3 tasks for the next day. That way, when I wake up, I already have a starting point.

In the evening, I try to spend time with my husband and love getting outside when possible. And yes, I enjoy a good TV show.

How did you get started in the industry?

As many do, I did not begin my career in the event industry. I discovered how much I love event planning while working in a university setting. I have also taught 4th and 5th grade and my students will always have a place in my heart.

While there are many differences between education and event planning, each role demands a high degree of intentional planning, considering other’s needs, and guiding the student or client toward their goals and objectives. At one point, I realized my true love was helping couples plan their weddings and more than that, creating authentic moments and memories that they will treasure.

My father in law has been a small business owner for 30 years and ultimately, he was the inspiration and model for me to step out on my own and start my own wedding planning business, Glorious Weddings & Events.

In terms of wedding planner education, before I started, I took a class to become a certified planner by Weddings Beautiful. Christy Wright’s “Business Boutique” lays out a helpful guide to creating a business plan, which I’d highly recommend.

One of the best things I did during my first year of business was to hire a business coach and enroll in SCORE mentoring. There are so many great resources out there for small businesses today. A small regional office called Community Business Partnership offers many workshops which were very helpful. Finally, I regularly participate in Tuesdays Together, and a local group called the Women’s Wedding Network. Humorously, men are also welcome.

What inspires you?

If I need to strategize or plan for my business, taking a walk or heading into nature always helps generate my thoughts and ideas. I’m very much a pen & paper type of person, and have to get away from the computer for clarity.

Nature, especially moving water, mountains, and forests, never fails to inspire me, clear my head, and gives me perspective and insight into where to focus and prioritize. It is not uncommon to see me walking with pen and paper in hand! I also love using the voice memo app to draft blog posts or tricky emails. If you’re a verbal processor, this might be very helpful for you.

Blogs and places that inspire me:

Planner’s Lounge

Joanna Gaines & her line

Magnolia,

Jenna Kutcher’s podcast, “Goal Digger”

Guy Raz’s podcast, “How I Built This”.

Marie Forleo, Elizabeth Gilbert, and Brene Brown on the creative & business life.

A favorite entrepreneurial story is Danny Meyer’s book, “Setting the Table: Transforming the Power of Hospitality in Business”

A trip to an antique or vintage store for ideas.

Sitting down with other entrepreneurs – I think by talking (lol) and am an extrovert. I learn so much from my peers.

What are your favorite online resources for your business?

The Strategy Hour Podcast

She Creates Business – A Podcast for Wedding Pros

The Ambition Studio

Refine for Wedding Planners

Aside from wedding and event planning, how do you spend your time?

I joke that one of my interests is finding new hobbies and interests. I am a long-time runner and currently training for a half marathon. I regularly practice yoga, enjoy cooking (when I have the time), and enjoy perfecting the art of making macarons. In the summer, you’ll find me at the pool.

I have family in Colorado and love the mountains, hiking, and piney air. I was born in San Diego, California and wonder why my parents ever left. I call myself a Virginia native, as I’ve lived here since I was four years old.

And I can’t forget my amazing husband, who is ever patient with my crazy schedule and the messes I create.

I’m currently trying to spend less time on my phone

Alyssa, thank you so much for taking the time to share your story and a day in your life. If you are an event planner and would like to be featured, download our questionnaire today and email it to us along with a photo. If you aren’t sure about being featured, take a few minutes to read how it can help your business.

photo credit: Rob Jinks Photography

from Event Planning Essentials https://plannerslounge.com/day-in-the-life-alyssa-glorioso/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[ntrending]

Watch this fascinating time lapse of crews replacing an overpass in just a weekend

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/watch-this-fascinating-time-lapse-of-crews-replacing-an-overpass-in-just-a-weekend/

Watch this fascinating time lapse of crews replacing an overpass in just a weekend

Cranes lifted pre-made pieces into their new home to expedite the process. (VDOT/)

You’ve probably heard the joke about how various northern states have two seasons: winter and highway construction season. That’s because big road repair projects often take months and severely disrupt residents’ mobility. Recently, however, the Virginia Department of Transportation swapped a worn out 61-year-old bridge for brand new one in just a weekend in an amazing time-lapse video depicting the process.

In this case, the bridge was one of several in the complicated Seven Corners intersection in Falls Church, Va. The overpass crosses U.S. Route 50, a very busy commuter route in suburban Washington D.C., and the usual months-long process of demolishing the old bridge and putting up a new one would have created a traffic headache in an area that already has enough of them.

So VDOT’s Northern Virginia office got the idea to do the NASCAR pit stop version of bridge replacement instead. Replacing an 87-foot span of concrete and steel in just 54 hours was an amazing accomplishment that was based on exactly the same kind of planning and preparation.

When the weather forecast looked acceptable for the weekend of Aug 2-4, the team sprung into action. In NASCAR, they don’t remove a wheel from the car, take it to the tire-changing machine, remove the tire from the wheel, mount a new tire, balance it and then carry it back to the car to be reattached. They have four new wheels ready with new tires already mounted on them, ready to be swapped into place.

That’s exactly what VDOT did, by building the replacement bridge in pieces nearby and loading them onto trucks, so everything was at the ready. They not only pre-cast all the concrete pieces rather than pouring concrete onto the bridge deck and waiting for it to cure, they even pre-fit all the pieces together to ensure everything would work together. They also upgraded the bridge’s abutments ahead of time, to be ready for the new span.

Pulling all of these elements together required the right equipment. Just as NASCAR crews use powerful hydraulic jacks rather than the flimsy contraption in your car’s trunk, the VDOT team used a huge crane rated to lift 550 tons to move the 70-ton bridge pieces, said district bridge engineer for the project, Gary Runco. “It was worth it to pay a few extra dollars to be sure the crane absolutely would work,” he observed.

Concrete components wait for installation (VDOT/)

One important difference between this and a pit stop is that the old bridge was maybe more like your family car, whose wheels aren’t removed regularly. So, when the bridge replacement pit crew went to remove the old bridge’s bearings, they found them well stuck after more than six decades in place. As every DIYer expects on a project, of course the access to them was poor, making the job of breaking them loose even harder, Runco reported.

This was their first time doing a quick replacement, so the team also didn’t think to label all the parts when they pre-fit the bridge pieces together. This led to some head-scratching during the swap, as some of the diaphragms that connect bridge girders got mixed up and had to be sorted out during the operation.

Another hiccup in the operation came in estimating how far back to cut the so-called “cheek” walls of the concrete to make room for the new bridge to fit into place, leaving workers to cut out a bit more room during the installation. For a first-time effort, it is incredible that the team was able to execute it with so few surprises and finish right on time in a schedule that wisely anticipated some delays.

Unsurprisingly, many residents are thrilled with the quick-change operation. “We’ve had no complaints and a lot of accolades for getting it done so quickly,” said Runco. Doing so increased the price tag by about 33 percent over traditional methods, but provided a huge benefit in terms of reduced disruption.

After such a successful first effort, VDOT will be looking at other upcoming bridge replacements as candidates for this same quick-swap process to minimize interference with traffic flow, he said. “You can never justify anything with any delays if you include user cost” in the considerations, Runco explained.

Written By Dan Carney

[feedbaylenny]

First, I have to thank everybody who looked at Monday’s blog post. The analytics were incredible, the best ever (and that’s all that counts, right? 🙂). If you haven’t seen it yet, it gives a brief overview of the place I worked for 15 months until August. Feel free to comment below it, or on my Twitter page. You can also subscribe to these blogs with your email address and get an email automatically every time I post.

One thing I left out was that during the long interview process, in early 2016, while I was working a great job in the Tri-Cities of TN/VA, the future boss asked me at the end of a Friday Skype interview to write up a critique of the station’s website. I was literally told it was “to see how smart” I am. Two other managers were sitting right there. I was given a week, but finished it that weekend because I was so excited about the possibility of returning to Philadelphia.

Look below and see, it was a very long and thoughtful critique, and included multiple pictures. During my interview at Fox 29 — coincidentally on Leap Day, Feb. 29, 2016 — the boss even joked about still reading it! I guess it was good. Too bad most of it was never implemented. That was a clue of what was to come, but it was too late. I had already moved and started the job. (The document is a slideshow. Click below to move forward, back, or to stop it.)

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

That’s all I have to say here on the subject of that station.

Just this week, a Pew Research Center report announced fewer Americans rely on TV news, and what type they watch varies by who they are. It found,

“Just 50 percent of U.S. adults now get news regularly from television, down from 57 percent a year prior in early 2016.”

That’s a 14 percent decline! Not only that, but the number takes into account local TV (still first place), cable TV (still second place), and also network TV (still third place).

I think the demographics are even more interesting. According to Pew, college graduates and high-income people watch much less local TV and network TV news. Cable news varies little.

The research doesn’t say but perhaps these people are working longer hours or have more access to news on electronic devices. Or they find the product dumbed-down. The first two possibilities can’t be changed but the last can.

But I think the biggest finding has to do with age. Pew divided the population into four groups, from 18-29 through 65+. It found across all groups, the younger a person is makes them much, much less likely to watch local, network, and also cable TV news. That sounds ominous for the future.

Again, the research doesn’t say, but I’ve learned from working with people young enough to be my children they have no history of getting the news from a scheduled TV newscast, or even cable. They were raised with technology that hadn’t been invented when the older people were growing up. They have no special tie to the TV set, having to watch on schedule, and probably can’t imagine watching in black and white.

(To go along with that, a huge majority of my students — who were younger around the year 2010, plus or minus a few — hadn’t even heard of a typewriter!) Also notice radio and newspapers were not even considered in the research.

Note the research was not done on web reading but following my train of thought, Americans will continue to use newer technology to get their news, which makes the web — whether desktop, tablet, phone, or whatever comes next — more and more important. We cannot continue to dumb it down, make mistakes, and hire cheap, good-looking but inexperienced people in big cities. We also need to root out the so-called journalists that lack ethics.

Click here to see the results in a chart, which also divides the American population by gender, race, and politics.

The Radio Television Digital News Association — and we know its agenda — asks, “Is the news for local TV stations all bad?”

Its former chair Kevin Benz admits, “Stations are producing more newscasts because local production is cheap with higher payback potential from selling local advertisers.” Let’s not forget we’re coming off an election year with lots of ads.

The organization claims “profitability has been trending level or up since 2010” and “This is also far from the first time local news has been written off due to changing consumption habits … but newsrooms have been slow to adapt.”

Back in the Tri-Cities, I was told many people get their news from their Facebook feed. That’s pitiful and of course, Facebook benefits but the publishers really don’t, other than a click to their own websites.

In the past year, not much has come out of the Facebook Journalism Project led by former news anchor Campbell Brown — who has since shown her true politics with The 74 Million, advocating for charter and private schools by taking money away from public schools. (I wrote about that in “Why teaching isn’t for me anymore” here, almost two years ago.)

According to Digiday, problems are that publishers have different business models and want different things from Facebook. And Facebook has mostly let publishers see new products before they launched, and listen to their feedback on various subjects at twice-annual meetings with nice meals. Subjects have included Instant Articles and starting a subscription product so you can’t read unlimited articles for free. There’s also discussion about separating factual news from somebody posting fiction.

File: Oprah Winfrey

It didn’t help that NBC tweeted about Oprah Winfrey possibly becoming president in the future during Sunday’s Golden Globe Awards.

NBC’s website has now clips of her speech and this description:

“The media mogul received the Cecil B. DeMille award at the A-list event, and brought the crowd to its feet with a rallying cry for solidarity amid the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements.”

The harassment scandals were huge. That’s what Oprah addressed. I’ve even written about it twice: here (“What is conscience? Elusive in the media, unfortunately”) and here (“Hey, you accused! Would Mom say, wait until your father gets home?”).

I’ve also tweeted about women who weren’t getting paid the same as men.

#GenderPayGap: “In negotiations with the network, she said she and her team ‘asked for what I know I deserve and were denied repeatedly.'” #money https://t.co/FNvQpNhh8A

— Lenny Cohen (@feedbaylenny) December 21, 2017

SEPARATE BUT SIMILAR SITUATION: From disagreement over #money to title. #NBC‘s DC sportscaster leaves. #Enews owned by same company. https://t.co/COKfnmpgmu https://t.co/pAglGkqk9e

— Lenny Cohen (@feedbaylenny) December 23, 2017

There’s something to be said for the anchor with decades of experience. Overpaid? Yes. But the good ones also play a #leadership role and keep the ship steady when multiple overpaid #CEOs come and go. https://t.co/0wcsXgQAtG

— Lenny Cohen (@feedbaylenny) December 27, 2017

Variety reported, “Host Seth Meyers even joked about the prospect in his opening monologue. The tweet from NBC said, ‘Nothing but respect for OUR future president. #GoldenGlobes.’”

The next morning, the network put out a statement, blaming outsourcing. Of course, the first tweet was removed.

Yesterday a tweet about the Golden Globes and Oprah Winfrey was sent by a third party agency for NBC Entertainment in real time during the broadcast. It is in reference to a joke made during the monologue and not meant to be a political statement. We have since removed the tweet.

— NBC (@nbc) January 8, 2018

How horrible! Oprah hadn’t yet spoken at the time, she never mentioned anything about becoming president, viewers won’t know the difference between a tweet from NBC Entertainment or NBC News if it doesn’t say, and why would the network let a third-party vendor tweet on its account, especially without overseeing? The network has no competent employee in-house? Disappointing!

The peacock isn’t proud

And late-breaking Thursday morning, we learned 18-year Fox News veteran James Rosen left the network – without Fox giving a reason – after eight of his former colleagues claimed he “had an established pattern of flirting aggressively with many peers and had made sexual advances toward three female Fox News journalists,” according to TVNewser.

Mediaite reports,

“One accusation involved him groping a female colleague in a shared-cab—an action she did not consent to. He then reportedly attempted to retaliate after his sexual advances were denied by attempting to take her sources, which would serve to damage her professional image.”

Also, the Washington Post says it suspended 28-year reporter Joel Achenbach for 90 days what it called “inappropriate workplace conduct” involving current and former female colleagues. He apologized in a statement, but the paper will continue to investigate.

I’m going to end on a better note, in contrast to what I wrote about Monday. Know I’ve been interviewing with different national and international companies here in Philadelphia. Tuesday, I found out I made it to the next round with one firm, and I’m obviously very happy about that. I told the woman on the phone who was simply following up on her morning email that everybody has been so supportive. We’d talked before and her response was simply that they are a partnership, rather than a corporation, and that there is no need for competition amongst (potential) employees.

That’s nice to hear, and it gives me hope.

P.S. On a personal note: Tuesday night in Florida, my mother fell in the kitchen. She hit her face on the floor. There was lots of blood, but no concussion. Turns out, she broke her pelvis in three places: two in the front, and one in the back. No surgery required, but she’ll have to spend another day or two in the hospital. The next two weeks are supposed to be very painful, and it could take her four months to get better. The doctor suggested time rehab since she can’t do much. Please keep her in your thoughts. 😦

Follow-up, fewer watching TV news, future president? First, I have to thank everybody who looked at Monday's blog post. The analytics were incredible, the best ever (