Fall Fashion Weekend

Minneapolis is starting to look up. Tonight I went to a cocktail party launching the kickoff of Minneapolis Fall Fashion weekend, and surprised myself by actually having fun and meeting some cool folk. Work has continued to be crazy between all the buyer meetings within my department and trying to get my presentation together for tomorrow. I did a walkthrough of my presentation today with my mentor and it went well. She gave me a few really good things to consider and surprisingly I managed to get through it in the 15 minute timeframe they gave us. I had some time at the end of the day to make changes and tweaks, and I had high hopes of printing out the final presentation before I left but a couple of reports I was waiting on didn't come through and the color printer started spazzing out so I will have to be one of those last minute folk printing it out right before the presentation. Luckily it's not until the afternoon so worst case scenario, I can spend my lunch hour doing it (great).
I was trying to get out of the office by 5/5:30 at the latest since the cocktail party was from 5-7 and I had to go home and get my car, but messing with the printer, I ended up not leaving until 6. Then of course, I got caught in downtown traffic and got lost for a hot second so I didn't make it to the restaurant until about 6:45. Luckily, folks were still around. I walked in and asked about the event and was told that people were just seated randomly at different tables and I should sit wherever. Ok, talk about intimidating. So I just randomly go sit at a table of about 7 people and it turns out that the girl I'm sitting next to was a contestant on Project Runway (don't ask me her name b/c no, for all my fashion interest, I don't watch the show - nothing against the show, I just rarely watch television). So I listened to her talk about how the show works and her experience (she only lasted 3 episodes before getting kicked off so not very insightful but still interesting). Then I sparked up a conversation with the girl sitting next to me and as it turns out she just graduated from college majoring in fashion merchandising and is trying to get an entry level position at my company. Small world. As we keep talking it turns out the girl sitting next to her is her older sister who is a graphic designer. It made for interesting conversation. At some point, two stylists from a local salon joined us (a lady and a guy with really wild hair that I'm guessing only he could pull off) and they were also really nice. So we chatted with them for a while then they left to go "table hop" since there were very few people left. After they left, the three of us chatted for a little while longer then I was about to take off and go home, then the older sister said "well, since we have Keeva here, I feel like we should show her a little bit of Northeast" (I had mentioned this was my first visit to NE Minnneapolis - yes, I live in my own little bubble of downtown). She asked me if I was up for it and I said sure, so off we went walking down Hennepin to this bar called Nye (apparently it was rated by GQ some time ago as one of the best bars in the country). Ok, so not that I'm any bar expert by any means but it was a cute little bar. It had a very old school, country feel. I ordered water (um, yeah I had to drive home). We probably stayed there about an hour or so just chitchatting about the most random of things, but they were both very nice. On our way out, we ran into some of the older sister's ex-coworkers including two big black guys named Buzz and Dan (ok, I know your mama did not name you Buzz). Apparently they work for some design/ad firm and also are in a band together. We chatted with them for a little bit (they were hilarious btw) then headed back to our cars. Before I left the older sister gave me her card and said she'd connect with me on facebook since I'm sure there aren't a ton of Keeva's on there. She said she'd invite me out to some girls night out events which would be fun. I walked back to my car thinking only in Minnesota can I go to a random event, meet two random people who are just simply nice, kick it with them all night and genuinely have fun. Or maybe its not just in Minnesota but clearly, that doesn't happen in NYC. It's actually kinda nice.
I'm home now and I was supposed to be going over this presentation again but I'm tired, and I think I'm even tired of looking at the presentation so I'll just have to say a prayer that it all works out. I felt good about it earlier and I'm sure I've made it a bigger deal in my head than it will be in real life. I'm looking forward to getting through this week though. It's a busy one.