Rollercoast Wednesday

Today has been an up and down kind of day.

On one hand, I found out today that I will not being going to grad school next year, as the last school I was waiting on kindly (very kindly, actually) let me know that they had informed all of their accepted students yesterday. Well, ok then.

On the other hand, a lifelong dream was realized. I met a beauty queen.

In my role at Arkansas Business, I'm often required to attend press conferences and news announcements, and I've met some pseudo-celebrities and important business figures. Today, though, tops it all.

A local news channel sent out a media alert yesterday that they'd be holding a news conference today to announce their new morning show co-host. Because I work with some insiders, we actually found early who it was going to be: Alyse Eady, Miss Arkansas 2010 and 1st runner-up to Miss America 2011. Nice move, Channel 11. 

So, anyway. I went to the news conference, and after the station made the announcement live and Alyse talked about how excited she was to become a part of the team, we got a few moments to chat at the following reception.

It was everything I imagined, but also very strange. To begin with, when I used to watch beauty pageants as a little girl (shout out to the sister), I was exactly that: a little girl. And the beauty queens were adults, and were beautiful and so were sort of not-real people.

Not only is Alyse a real person, but she's my age, graduated in May with a BA in communications, and confessed that she's nervous about having to wake up early for her new gig. Say, what!? Beauty queens are normal people? Who would've thought.

Of course, Alyse and her parents were named Family of the Year in 2007 (p.s. that's an award? Why didn't we know about that, Kauffmann/Harmatz gang?), and she appeared on Letterman to perform her talent. Which is (drum roll please): performing "I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart" with two ventriloquist dummies.

So, no, not exactly normal.