MOVING ON.

Well, I really haven't had the greatest desire to blog lately, and I think it's due to the fact that my last blog post was epic/monumental/a milestone/etc. etc. ha ha! And I don't think anything else I write will be as exciting or as fun, but I promised myself that I'd keep up with this throughout the summer, so I'm going to keep going - move on. So, you may or may not know that I now live in a new apartment on 108th street. Between Broadway and Amsterdam. I really like the area a lot, I have a Duane Reade right around the corner, a yoga place 3 blocks down, 3 grocery stores within 2 blocks, and the subway is only 2 1/2 blocks away. It's great. I also am about equal distance from both Morningside Park, Central Park, and Riverside Park, which is great for running - one of my newest activities as an attempt to tone up for the wedding, ha! Yoga is a part of that too. Vanessa saw a mouse in our apartment about a week or so ago, ha! I think she blogged about it, so you can go read more there, but we've taken all of the necessary precautions to keep it out/catch it, ha! If you are really curious you can go to http://maps.google.com/ and type in 209 West 108th Street, New York City, NY 10025, click on the street view picture and you can explore my neighborhood. It's a pretty sweet feature on google maps, actually. It's fun.
So, the next topic of importance would be L'Oreal. Maybe you wonder what I do all day at 575 5th avenue on the 24th floor. Well, I work on two brands that are under L'Oreal Paris Skincare within the Consumer Products Division. It's kind of fun because most people hardly know that L'Oreal Paris has a skincare line. I didn't when they assigned it to me, but it's exciting because there is a lot going on to change and strengthen the brands. I work on Skin Genesis, a brand new product that just launched 2H'07 and Sublime Bronze, a self tanning line. (I could seriously use some of that product right now, ha! I don't get much sun in the city...) I work in marketing/Brand managment for both of the brands, which is very different than advertising, but I like it. There are many more numbers, actually a ton of more compared to my last internship, but I really like it. It's fun for me to watch category share, and dollar sales, ha ha! I'm kind of becoming a nerd that way. So, besides all of my work that I have on the two brands, each intern has a project that they work on throughout the duration of the internship and present it around the first week of August to all the higher level managers. I'm already nervous, ha! But I'm way excited about my project. I'll admit, I was kind of worried that L'Oreal would ask me to reasearch out a niche ingredient and understand it's compatability in shampoo, ha! But that's not what my project is at all. My advertising background is going to come in very handy. It's kind of a lot to explain now, but it deals with more non-traditional, event, direct-to-consumer marketing strategies. I'm pretty excited about it. I have also been super impressed with the structure and nature of L'Oreal's internship program. They invest a lot into their employees, and even into their interns. My manager is amazing and everyone on my team is more than willing to help me with my questions - and I have a lot, ha! Plus, the perks are great, ha ha! There's a company store on the lower level of the building where I get 50% off of all L'Oreal product, which is way more than just L'Oreal - they own Lancome, Keihls, Ralph Lauren/Armani/Deisel/Viktor & Rolf fragrances, Matrix, Biolage, Maybelline, and lots more. So, there's a lot to choose from. I've only been down there a few times though, so I'm not going to come anywhere near my $300.00/month limit, ha! They also have a cafe that's subsidized so it's not expensive, but it's surprisingly good. And they have a subsidized Starbucks, ha! Which I wasn't as thrilled about, but it's fun anyway. There has been an update on my project though lately, since I first began writing the post. The head VP of marketing is going on vacation so they moved a lot of the intern project presentatios up! And I'm going to present probably at the beginning of next week. I've been working like crazy on it, and it's probably going to keep me from going home for a weekend to plan wedding stuff. Anyway, I'm going to post this... finally.

One of the brands I work on... I get to look at beautiful Peneolpe quite often.
(Up top) The L'Oreal building... before they started construction. Now it's covered in a big blue box.