Sunday, November 29, 2009

turkey gluttony galore! gamecocks win huge! 6 days until moscow!

first and foremost i have to say GO GAMECOCKS! the carolina gamecocks kicked major clemson bootay yesterday. it was a great way to kick off a fun night with friends! GO COCKS!

happy thanksgiving! it was a good day despite not being with my whole family in south carolina. my sister and i skyped my parents and our brothers and nieces and nephews in the morning so it was good to be able to see them. you gotta love technology. i also made them a little video with my new FLIP MINO HD camera i just got. it's an early christmas present, but i thought it would be an awesome thing to have when i go to russia. back to thanksgiving... i still got to eat wonderful food and be in good company and really that's all that matters. so all together, i had three thanksgiving meals. yes, ridiculous i know, hence the name of the blog post. i only over indulged two of the three so i call that a success. my sister, brother-in-law and niece went to a couple stores on black friday and got lunch and i'm just not sure i understand why their specials would be filled with turkey the day after thanksgiving. no one is going to eat your turkey when they have bags of it left over in their fridge. turkey soup, turkey panini (which honestly sounded delicious and i thought about getting it, i opted for a salad instead with no turkey), turkey something else, turkey this, and turkey that. so i say no, you are not allowed to have turkey specials on your menu the day after thanksgiving.

i feel like i should be saying good night, it's 4:54 p.m. and already pitch black outside. how ridiculous is that? but that's new england winter for you. i leave in 6 days for moscow. however, i hope things are going to be ok. yesterday, a homemade bomb was detonated on a train going from moscow to st. petersburg and it killed 25 people and injured many mor
e. very scary for going over there in 6 days.

i may have a post every day counting down until i leave on saturday and then i will hopefully be able to blog and post pictures while i am there. i can't wait to see this!

6 days!



Tuesday, November 24, 2009

sometime it just happens


Sometimes you just have to have half a bottle of wine because you had a stressful day and it was two days before Thanksgiving and you went to help out a friend and got a parking ticket because the METER you parked at and PAID was for residents only because that makes a lot of sense. Sometimes you just have to drink and hang out with yourself. I tried to read a book, I tried to play the guitar. TV and wine won! But it's ok, sometimes that happens! Happy Thanksgiving because I am still thankful for the stressful days. I am thankful for everyday! The happy ones, the sad ones, the silly ones, the fun ones, the crazy busy ones, the slow ones and the great ones! I am happy and thankful for every single day!

Friday, November 20, 2009

Why did they let the turkey join the band?

Because he had the drumsticks. I am queen of corny jokes, and I love it.

Question: Did you know what you wanted to do when you were a sophomore in high school? I mean did you have any idea what you wanted to study in college, much less know what college was all about? Yeah, I didn't either. But I met 8 or 9 kids today that pretty much know exactly what they want to major in when they get to college. We had this great charter school from a not-so-great part of Boston bring students in to get an idea of what we do at Kaspersky. The mission of the charter school is to get each student placed into college by the time they graduate from the school. They each introduced themselves and said what they hoped to study in college. I was amazed that each of them knew what they wanted to do. From mechanical engineering to graphic design. Each one of them knew. I was just blown away honestly. They were polite. They asked questions. I haven't been out of high school for that long, but it just seemed like a lifetime ago that I was there. It's the little things we do at Kaspersky that make me happy.

Work this week was just all-around weird. Today, my teammates and I decided to have "Operation Plant Removal". What is this you ask? Well, since the beginning of summer, we have had these gnats/fruit flies around our office area and you will hear people clap every once and a while and then exclaim, "Got him" or "damn it!". It's a little game we have. But no one could figure out why the bugs were there until the groundskeeper mentioned it could be the plants that we have in our office. That was about three months ago. So earlier this week, we devised a plan to get rid of said plant. It needed to go. I was killing three to four of these bugs a day and so was everyone else. It was/is disgusting. So at 5:15, we placed the plant on a rolling chair and escorted it out of the building, down a hill, and disposed of the evidence. We shall see on Monday if anything is said. Operation Plant Removal = Successful!

Tomorrow, my roommates and I are having a Thanksgiving dinner for all of our friends. The roomie got a 25 pounder and will be cooking that beast all day. I'm going to make a couple of little side dishes. It's the first time I've ever hosted a Thanksgiving dinner so it'll be interesting. It'll be good to have everyone there though. Yoga in the morning to work off some stress and balance the eating that will ensue tomorrow.

I am sad that I can't get home for the Thanksgiving holiday, but luckily I have family up here. It's not like I'll be alone at a bar or anything. But it's still nice to be at home for t-giving, especially when it's one of the best meals. But I will be heading home in about a month and I can't wait to spend a full week at home with the family. I miss my nieces and nephews a lot and feel like I miss out on a lot being so far away.

Well, off to bed! Have a wonderful weekend and get excited for a short work week next week!

-Katie

Monday, November 16, 2009

Thanks to Publicity Club I'm Off to Russia!

I was asked to write a guest blog for an organization that I have been a part of for about a year now, The Publicity Club of New England. I have truly enjoyed and benefited from each event I have attended! Especially because they helped connect me to my current employer. I have been there for a year and I received a promotion and a raise on my one year anniversary and things are going great. And as the title says, I am going to Russia in a few weeks! I am very excited and very nervous! But it is going to be a blast. I will take plenty of pictures and video (with the new Flip I am getting for Christmas) and will drink lots of Vodka. Ok, not too much! Here is my blog post on how I have benefited from the PubClub.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2009

Thanks to the Pub Club, I'm off to Russia

By Katie Boucher, Kaspersky Lab

I am going to Moscow in December for work and it is all because I attended a PubClub event. No really.

I graduated from The University of South Carolina in May of 2008 and decided to move to Boston later that summer. After applying to over 75 jobs that summer to no avail, I still decided to move up here. I did everything my counselors, my teachers, my mentors told me to and I was feeling defeated. I never expected to be in that position. My sister was gracious enough to put the word out among all of her friends in the PR world- letting them know her little sister was a hard worker and willing to do whatever it takes to make it in the PR world.

One of her friends stepped up and took the place as my mentor. Thankfully, she knew people who knew people.

I attended a PubClub event with a really great panel, discussing awesome case studies. People on the panel represented companies from Lego to Dunkin Donuts. It was obviously a great panel because I still remember it.

During this event, I met Karen Reynolds, who is the now the President of the PubClub. We set up a time to meet to just talk. It was one of the first informational interviews I took. And as it turns out, it was the only one I needed. When we met, Karen helped me realize what I truly was passionate about. She insisted that I inject that passion into every interview that I would have in the future.

After we met, Karen also put the word out there. A week or so later, I received an email about an internship opportunity with a Russian owned Internet security company. They were looking to bring their PR team in-house and the company was growing at an alarming rate.

I really didn't know what to expect. I did my research, I was passionate, and I went into the interview with a new confidence I didn't have before.

Well, it paid off! The job started off as a three month internship with potential to turn into a full-time job. I worked my butt off. I did everything necessary to prove that I was worthy enough to be on this newly developed in-house PR team. I made a name for myself by developing the Daily Digest (pretty much a news clipping), but I added daily jokes and riddles, it was and is truly something that is still mine.

I was hired on full-time in February and I have now been with the company for a year. A year that has truly proven to be something awesome. Oh, so back to the Russia trip. The four person PR team is going to Russia for a global PR summit. I already have my parka and my fur-lined boots packed! So thank you PubClub for helping me connect with people and my lesson learned from this is: talk to people, listen to what they have to say. Then talk to more people.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

serial hi-liters

i was riding on the subway the other day in to town to meet with a reporter and i was people watching as always. and that's when i spotted it, the serial highlighter. what in the world am i talking about? oh you know. the person who is studying/reading with highlighter in hand and cannot keep from highlighting every single sentence they read. why? you know that every single sentence isn't that important, but you never know... it could be. i am (or was) plenty guilty of this practice/sickness. my favorite was when i highlighted the crap out of something, completely filled the page with yellow and pink and my favorite blue, and then you don't even go back to that page to ever look at it again. and then you just have a useless page with highlighter thrown up on it and when you turn to the page, your eyes go into like epileptic shock and you can't see correctly for the next couple of hours. it's a strange thing and something i am not sure i will ever understand.