Jillian Als

Entries in work (28)

Wednesday

Jul282010

august is going to be crazy.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010 at 6:34AM

Well, life is about to get busy here in Denmark.

I signed my contract to work for Experian (my parent company from back in the US) and I start Monday August 2^nd! It’s been a long time coming, just so happy it has properly worked out.

Here’s where I’ll be working, not a typical American office, huh?:

It’s in Copenhagen East – pretty central!

My role will be to support Experian domains all over EMEA (Europe, Middle East & Africa) to get some better ecommerce (webshop) functionality hence my title, eCommerce Project Manager. I am also going to be working on SEO and web analytics for key sites and teaching local marketing teams how to do some of these bits on their own as well. A variety of hats I suppose, which I like!

Of course as soon as I accepted the job all the other opportunities I’d been working came rolling in. You snooze you lose, Denmark! I hit the ground with rollerblades on (hitting the ground running just wouldn’t do it justice as we all know what a slow runner I am).

School starts August 7^th. Say goodbye to relaxing Saturdays. I have school every Saturday from 9-3 for the next year and a half. Awesome. I also have plenty of assignments to work on during the week.

Then what else… oh let’s see… we have a Danish wedding on September 4th! We just mailed in the invites. I have no idea how much time this is going to consume in planning but I know I don’t have a whole lot of it to go around so it should be interesting!

If you’re interested in any wedding details (any of you in the states are MORE THAN WELCOME – we’d love some guests from home!), I’m once again updating the ‘wedding’ section of the site. Including the wedding blog. :)

To get me through all the celebration and the stress, my husband found proper Tequila in duty free in Latvia two weeks ago. God bless Latvia.

God bless tequila.

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Jillian Als |

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Wednesday

Jul212010

summer on sjælland continues...

Wednesday, July 21, 2010 at 3:00AM

Another great summer weekend in here in Sjælland (the big island we live on).

Friday I traveled out to western Sjælland with Christian’s mom, a friend and Christian’s siblings Emilie and Magnus. We stayed at a “summer house” on the peninsula called Røsnæs just outside the city of Kaldunborg.

We took a boat trip out into the bay to look for some dolphin like fish, the closest English translation I could find was “porpoise” but I think they’re still a little different. I don’t know, we didn’t see any in the end. Which I’m sure you can guess, was fine by me the fish hater. ;)

We left late Saturday afternoon and I headed into Copenhagen to meet up with Jeanette for dinner, a movie and drinks. Sounds like a romantic date, haha. We ate at ChilliMilli and saw Shrek (the 4^th?) which was fine, definitely not as funny as the first two but anyone could have predicted that.

We were going to get a beer at a bar or something of the sort but decided to buy a few beers at the grocery store and sit in Nyhavn and people watch instead. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it’s my favorite thing to do on a nice day in Copenhagen.

I like to watch all the people walking by and guess where they’re from. Come join me sometime and I will share with you my skills on guessing.

I took a train home around 11:30 and missed a connection by 4 minutes and ended up with a 200kr ($35) taxi ride home from the station. Oh well, it was a really nice night and worth it!

Yesterday I relaxed for most of the day and then joined Christian’s uncle’s family and Farmor to Gillileje for dinner in the harbor. I found the one bit of chicken on the menu (I’m pretty good at that) and we ate outside and enjoyed the evening sun.

We took a walk on the rocky/sandy beach there after dinner. We looked for amber and special rocks that had what looked like petrified starfishes on them. I found a piece of amber, not sure if that’s special or not, though. The kids took a swim and then we started out to go home.

On the road out of the town there was a circus setting up. They literally had just arrived and the animals were out getting some fresh air. We stopped and got to be pretty close (without anything than a mere rope between us) to elephants, zebras, camels and horses. Pretty cool.

In other news, most of you probably read on Facebook that I got a job here, finally! I am absolutely over the moon about it. I definitely need structure and routine back in my life, not to mention a Danish income!!

I’m working remotely until the end of the month for my old job still and then supposedly I start my new job the first of August. So I never really was unemployed, kind of nice. I’ll know more details this week when I go in to sign some paperwork. :D

Thanks for all your love and support, as always.

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Sunday

Jun132010

being home alone leads to...

Sunday, June 13, 2010 at 5:40PM

Well after a week alone, hubby came back. Thank god. I was missing him lots! Here’s a shot of him at lunch on Saturday . It’s from my Hipstamatic iPhone app which takes old looking photos, love it:

Despite being alone I think the week went pretty fast. I had lots of ‘dinner dates’ and such to keep me busy.

Tuesday I had a meeting in the city about a job with my parent company. She expressed to me several times that it is not a matter of ‘if’ I have the job but a matter of when. Hopefully at the end of this coming week I’ll know more.

After the meeting I met up with Jeanette for some shopping in the city and then we headed to her apartment to rip down some old wallpaper and brainstorm about… a PROPER DANISH WEDDING.

Ah, I said it! I agreed to this over a bottle of wine at Christian’s mom’s house on Monday night. The end of this summer, we’re still working some church logistics as the first priority. I still want my princess church!

It should be fun and it allows us to celebrate with all of our family and our awesome Danish friends. :D I’m sure you’ll hear more but it’s going to be another bohemian all hands on deck kind of wedding. Love it! Steph… are you up for round two? JK you’ll be happy to know they don’t traditionally do MOHs and bridesmaids and such. Just a few flower girls.

Speaking of weddings. Steffen and Haley stopped by to see me on Thursday and are newly engaged thanks to a little help of a ring delivery to my desk at work in the US! Their NYC trip was cancelled with the ash cloud business so we've very happy to help and be a part of their special story! Congrats!

This weekend we spent a lot of QT with the family. Christian’s older brother was in town with the lovely Emma. She and I have figured out how to communicate somehow… for the most part. We play hide and seek well. Today we rode bikes together.

Christian had to fix a number of things on Maggie. Suddenly I know why it was sooo hard to ride her in the beginning. Okay so I had two flat tires. Then Christian sees that my front brake is always touching the wheel and kind of permanently on a bit… pfft. All fixed up. She rides like a dream!

In other news. I have had my 2^nd ever lesson on stick shift today. It went fine in the school yard just going in circles and starting and stopping. Christian even taught me the emergency brake trick when starting on a hill which I semi-got.

After the school yard I drove down this long windy country road which was fine except when I had to come to a stop and make a turn. I stalled in the middle of the road and oncoming traffic came at me in both directions… they swerved in different directions around us as I cried and refused to go further with the lesson. HAHA. Almost dying was enough for one day!

Back to ‘the grind’ tomorrow – aka working from home. Chr is still around somehow, which is great for the ever growing ‘honey-do’ list. :)

Day one of my new gym tomorrow! Eeekk.

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Wednesday

May192010

hey there, remember me?

Wednesday, May 19, 2010 at 12:41PM

I actually have gone a little crazy. My life is a whirlwind trying to get ready to move.

The race. First of all THANK YOU A MILLION TIMES OVER for all of your generous donations to The BCRF - it was such an inspiration and truly touching. In the end I raised a whopping $1600 in one month for the cause. Awesome awesome awesome.

The race was difficult for me this year, more so than last year mostly due to the heat and humidity. I had to take it a little slower but I only finished 3.5 mins slower than last year - not awful. Of course you know this is a disappointment to me and I'm still not over it, haha. I'm in better physical condition this year but for a multitude of reasons I couldn't quite pick up the pace. Grrrrr.

Anyway it's done. Next big race on the agenda is the Copenhagen Half Marathon on Sept 12th with the hubby. Yep, that is our 1 year anniversary date. We'll be running 13.1 miles and then going home to eat frozen wedding cake! (He hates me)

Moving. Well it's all coming along, and SWIFTLY at that. I am realizing that even what I consider not to be a lot of "stuff" - it's A LOT OF STUFF. Holy Cow! Let's all join my campaign to Christian that he needs to buy me all new clothes over there instead. :P

Job. It's a WIP. I have some contract work with my current company/role to keep me busy for a month or so and a couple things in motion for a full time placement with Experian EMEA so fingers crossed these "approvals" happen and I'll be fully and gainfully employed by end of June.

Celebrating. I LOVE MY LIFE. I have the best friends and family a girl could ever ask for. Not a dull moment around here these days. I need to work out extra hard just to minify damage to my body from alcohol and dinners out. Wouldn't swap it for the world, though.

This weekend. GET READY FOR THE GAGA BAR CRAWL aka THE JMAs (Jill's Moving Awards). Gail has done a fantastic job planning and gathering all my loved ones for this fantastic event. I have super amazing friends flying in from all over the country. This is going to be epic. How are you going to get your JMA?

Christian. Firstly, I love him. He gets in TOMORROW. He has to help me with all my "stuff" as mentioned previously. But can't wait to plant some big kisses on his face, I've missed him so much!

That is the update - as you can tell I have a bit of excitement running through my veins.

Countdown:

1 Day til Chr gets here
3 Days til the best going away party ever
7 Days left of work at QAS Boston
7 Days til we go home to see the fam
11 Days til we SHIP OUT!

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Jillian Als |

26.2

Monday, April 19, 2010 at 8:17AM

Happy Marathon Day! Maybe someday I'll be conquering heartbreak hill on the third Monday in April but not this year :)

I am busy trying to conquer my life at the moment. I have been running a bit of a marathon over the past 2-3 weeks trying to stay afloat.

The presentation went really well! I was indeed nervous and some people could tell, others said they couldn't tell. Oh well, I got my point across, I annunciated and I didn't use notes. So for those things I am pretty proud of the whole experience.

My presentation was about a personal success story around my efforts with SEO. S E Say what? Well don't worry, part of the presentation was dedicated to explaining wtf Search Engine Optimization is all about.

I spoke to sheer frustration around a long period of time where results were stagnant against an immense amount of work that I was putting in. And the happy ending? 75% growth in dolla dolla bills y'all. The company's dolla's, unfortunately. 75% pay raise? A girl could dream.

In the aftermath of all things 'company day' two Fridays ago, I officially announced to my superiors and coworkers that I am moving to live with my (wonderful, delightful, handsome, perfect) husband in Denmark at the end of May. (can't wait babe!)

This has been a long time coming and personally I am ecstatic! But there is always a little fear of the unknown. Leaving a career path here and just have to hope it'll all kick back off over there. Keeping the faith... I have some good people from my company and my parent company lobbying for me so I'm crossing my fingers it all works out with a transfer to corporate in Denmark! :D

Moral of the blog post - running 26.2 miles or moving your entire life across an ocean are both a little daunting, exhilarating and full of potential. If you put in all the hard work, you have to have the confidence that you will not only 'pull it off' but prosper as well.

Good luck runners!

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Jillian Als |