May has always been a big month for me, but this year it seemed to be super-sized. Here are 14 reasons this May might’ve been my greatest to date:

• I turned 25. Hooray for lower car insurance rates!
• My cousin took us all to a stripper class for her bachelorette party. By “us all” I mean my mom, my aunt, my sisters (one is 17), and some of her friends. We were all in sweats and high heels. Yes, it was as funny as you picture it.
• Ships and Dip is in pre-sale mode, and cabins are flying out of inventory. We sold as many cabins in just a few hours this year as we did the first few days last year.
• I closed on my first house! I’ll move on June 7…and if anyone in the Atlanta area gets a wild hair and wants to help me fix it up, I will give you beer. And sneak you into early pre-sale token groups for the rest of time. It’s win-win.
• My sister Keekers graduated from high school! The last child to fly the coop. I think my mother is still crying.
• My other sister Hen is graduating from college this weekend. She’ll move out to L.A. in the fall to live our her filmmaker dreams. If any of you know people in L.A. she should meet, let me know.
• Cayamo went on sale to the public, and we just confirmed two more artists (to be announced soon) that absolutely make my day.
• We gained a great new addition to the Sixthman team – Nikkole. She was our contact at AirTran and will work with Pam and me in our new Business Development Department. It’s fancy.
• I celebrated a 2 year anniversary with a significant other for the first time ever. A far cry from my previous 2 month record.
• Hen’s birthday is today! Give her a call or shoot her a text (770-906-1459) and wish her a happy birthday…tell her I sent you.
• Memorial Day Weekend! I never hate three day weekends. And I needed the extra time to pack up my life.
• I got my $600 stimulus check! Thank you, George Bush. It’s about time you did something nice for me.
• Hen’s boyfriend is an executive chef, and he’s cooking us dinner tomorrow night. If you are ever in Savannah, go to Bistro in City Market and order the halibut. You will not be disappointed.
• I celebrated my 3 year anniversary with Sixthman. Just three short years ago, Andy was on his knees begging me to accept a full time job out of college for $8/hr. I’m glad he suckered me into it

Hope to keep the momentum rolling into June…

LC

Looking out the plane window while descending upon LaGuardia on Saturday, I couldn’t help but reminisce about each time in my life that I’ve swallowed in the Manhattan skyline from a plane. The first time, at fifteen years old, it was also my first time north of the Mason-Dixon Line, my first time ever on an airplane and my first time on vacation without my parents. The trip was organized by my high school drama club (obviously, I was one of the popular kids) and included all of the typical tourist trappings of really famous really big Broadway shows, and really famous really big buildings. My younger, idealistic and *sigh* much thinner self was able to imagine a time in the not too distant future where I would take New York by storm and live just like the twenty-somethings on that awesome new sitcom, “Friends.”

Seven years later, dreams of becoming the next great actress on Broadway were replaced with becoming the next great writer at the New Yorker, but I was still determined to live the dream. I had been back one other time my Junior year of college on a spring break trip which included “touring” with a friend’s band from Brooklyn to Poughkeepsie, selling t-shirts and generally pretending I knew what it was like to be punk, and had never lost the feeling that I belonged there (NYC, not Poughkeepsie).

Fresh out of college, I flew into LaGuardia with 2 suitcases full of all of the possessions not sold in order to afford the plane ticket and headed for my new home in Brooklyn. My cousin’s two room railroad style in Prospect Heights was not exactly Monica’s rent-controlled dream apartment in Manhattan, but it was still New York. My life as a twenty-something in New York was exactly as portrayed on television—except for the part where I had all the fabulous friends, or the whirlwind dating life, or the laugh track.

As I’m writing this blog as an employee of an Atlanta based company, you may already know how the story ends. Suffice it to say, after many waited tables and very few paid writing jobs (well, none actually), I found myself back in the city where I started. I’ve been back to visit several times since my life’s side-track in New York, each time with different goals (visiting the few friend I did make, attending art openings, or once just to go to H &M). I even found myself in New York this past weekend as a business traveler, a result of the very thing I found so elusive while living there, a job I love.

I still dream of New York but know it my heart that for most part it is a city of the very young and the very rich. The former will never happen again and latter is about as likely as the Broadway dream from when I was fifteen coming true, but it doesn’t matter. It may have taken me years to realize it, but I finally know it’s true that I’m the same person no matter what city I live in.

“It is not the coil because I have cleaned it. It is not the filter cause it to has been removed, cleaned, thoroughly inspected. I know that the freon levels are normal because the leak was fixed and the unit outside was re’filled’…What??? What is causing this?”

My nightmares are made of such words. Men in coveralls with grease on their faces toting wrenches and surplus venting. Thermostats that never move and just hold on to one hot degree…or that number goes higher and higher..and higher!!

I consider myself a handy person. Not afraid to tote a tool belt or take on a nail gun (air compressor and all). But when it comes to the air conditioner in this big yellow house…I am not handy. I am a mere player in its comedy of errors. I play the game, I try to overthrow the beast, and ultimately lose.

Oh it teases and works sometimes, that rich cool air coming from the vents that I have re-routed and begged to give us that refreshing breeze. But more often than not, you can find me with wrench in hand thawing the block of ice we call a compressor wondering what…what? what else could it be?

So bring on your zombies, your blood sucking vampires, your dreams of financial ruin, or even having to meet President Bush (that is for you Carla). I can take all those nightmares. Just send me an angel to fix the A/C. The rest can be solved with Ambien.

My parents and friends have always kidded me about mixing my food together instead of just eating each item individually. In the past I have dismissed their teasing casually; however, today on my flight to Miami I found myself mixing my food up yet again but, this time, I was not just sliding my meal from one side of the plate to the other, but deliberately lifting rice and veggies over the respective walls of their styrofoam container. And then it hit me…

I am not only deliberate about doing this with my food, but with all parts of my life. I had some time to kill so I started thinking about how I approach things in this manner.

It’s not just food- it’s friends, family, ideas and business- where I always strive to bring things together to make them taste a little bit better.

I have always thrived on getting different kinds of people in a room together and have ended up in an industry built by fusing people, music, fun and sun in an extraordinary combination.

Who knew that an innocent scoop of peas and mashed potatoes as a toddler would initiate a quest that would thread it’s way throughout my lifetime?

What other interesting and/or unusual conglomerations are prevalent in your lifestyles?

On my search for finding a new location for the Sixthman Team (since we are busting at the seams), I met yesterday with an architect. This guy was amazing! The minute I walked in to his “space” I thought to myself, this is what my eldest son will be like in 30+ years. As he walked me through his life I was in awe of was his incredible life stories. I thought about him a lot yesterday and could not wait to share the stories with my kids last night. Once we had finished watching a 70 min DVD that he had given to me about an expedition he had done in Antarctica my son said, “One day maybe I can be just like him and do something great. Then someone can make a movie about me.”

What I learned from this experience was not to go into something expecting to meet what other people might perceive as strange, just embrace what you can learn from meeting someone new and different!

For instance: Look at the following picture seated at your desk. Now, walk about 15 feet away from your computer and what do you see?

-Pam


I may be showing my age with this topic, but, whatever.
Today over coffee, we started talking about who won American Idol. I was glad that David Cook won, and brought up how Joel McHale from The Soup, calls David Archuleta a monchichi. Of course this started another conversation from the youngsters who do not know what a monchichi is. I even sang the jingle from the commercial, (which is extremely catchy), still…….nothing. Just as we were looking up monchichi on youtube, the FedEx guy came in the office, overheard what we were talking about, and started singing the jingle……….REDEMPTION!

Just in case you are waxing nostalgic for some monchichi, take a look

How can a person name their favorite band? Singular. Band. With the innumerable musicians over the years, how can you love just one band? How can the same music be the soundtrack to your entire life? When you’re depressed on a rainy day? When you’re driving in your car with all the windows down on the first day of spring? When you’re out dancing with your friends?

I prefer to take the High Fidelity route and pick my All-time Top 5 Favorite Artists. This isn’t a fixed list, it changes from time to time, although not often and only when truly warranted. It’s gotta be something AMAZING to boot an artist from my Top 5 list. And they can’t just be amazing now. They have to have been amazing; they must have proved themselves time and time again.

And then there are those that cannot be moved from the Top 5 list. Tom Waits for example. He is a staple, a pillar in my top 5. The longevity and integrity of the music of Tom Waits is unmatched.

My top 5 artists in no particular order
1. Tom Waits – timeless, classic
2. Ours – Amazing songwriting and powerful live show
3. Tool – Aenima is one of the best albums ever written
4. Muse – Classical piano in apocalyptic rock. Can I say more?
5. Ben Folds – He has a simplicity in his songwriting that has more depth than most people who use twice as many words

Who are your All-time Top 5 Favorite Artists?

A Favorite Ben Folds Five Song…
Evaporated.mp3

So, I’m sitting in a hospital lobby right now (just in the waiting area, nothing wrong here), and am observing these 2 little children, kinda going nuts, in their school uniforms, and probably behaving unlike they could even dream of in their school environment. I would imagine that in their classrooms, and through the hallways, these little ones have to act a certain way, and behave in a certain manner, and undoubtedly dress in a specific uniform each day. And the minute they are unleashed from that cofinement, they make up for lost time… Even if its in a hospital lobby.

In watching them, and laughing with their mother at their behavior, it dawned on me that these little kids are so similar to me, my friends, my coworkers, and everyone who has ever been exposed to our music experiences.

We spend all of our days, the majority of our time, in ‘uniform’… Displaying merely pieces of our personality. The minute we are able to get in an environment that is different, and new, and outside of that confinement, we are much like these little ones, and go into pure ‘crazy fun’ mode.

Although I feel very fortunate that I personally really enjoy my ‘confinement’ and daily ‘uniform’… I now have a greater insight into the reason I feel our guests thrive (I think that’s a moderate word for it) in our event environments.

So, I’m excited for these little people. And excited for those of you planning to strip off your uniform next year. At that point, we will all be ready to make up for lost time together.

-April

Rarely at Sixthman do you ever hear anyone refer to us as “The Sixthman Company” or “Sixthman, Inc.” Instead, we refer to ourselves as the “Sixthman Team”, of which we are all ‘members’ instead of merely ‘employees’. Recently I was reminded why the team metaphor is such a prominent feature of Sixthman.

Over the weekend my wife and I took our kids to watch our 6 year old neighbor play his last Little League game of the season. It’s been 25 years since I last stepped foot on a baseball field.  Instantly the sounds of kids cheering, the crack of the bat, and even the smell of the grass overwhelmed me with memories of my own Little League days.

When I was 6, my mom dropped me off at my first practice, though against my wishes, and told me to just have fun. That was the beginning of what would be the biggest part of my early years in sports playing baseball, soccer, football, basketball and even lacrosse. When I look back, my best memories were not of games we won or lost (except the ones where I was the reason we lost, obviously); they were of the friendships I made and especially the experience of being a part of a team.

As I held my 2 year old son on my shoulders I got so excited for the time to come where he joins his first team. In my mind, there is nothing that prepares you more for life as an adult than playing sports and the team experience. I can’t thank my mom enough for dropping me off at baseball practice that day.

10. We are too busy requesting songs for Kelly to play at the 4:00 pm dance break.

9. That damn phone won’t stop ringing.

8. Big Pink Ball…….fell off. May require medical attention.

7. That damn chat won’t stop ringing.

6. Joy has to perfect her dance moves.

5. Jill is making spreadsheets. Jill is ALWAYS making spreadsheets. Ask her, she will show you them.

4. There was an argument. It was brutal. The fax machine is broken.

3. Joy has started a small fire in the office, we have it under control now, mostly…..uh oh, gotta go.

2. The “Steve fan club” has too much email to answer.

1. We are too busy preparing for the impending Armageddon as indicated by the proliferation of the blogging industry.