Its Friday, I guess I can go out to eat

I woke up this morning feeling very rested and was actually looking forward to getting to work this morning to get started on all the projects I had on my plate. I arrived after eating some yogurt and a bagel for breakfast. I hit the ground running. First I worked on dividing the retail signs for the Customer Appreciation Week sale into packets for each store. This took a while as each store got certain quantities of each sign (490 signs total!) that were placed in a manila envelope labeled for each store to hold until the week of May 5th. After finishing that daunting task I designed the poster to be printed to slide into the metal racks that will hold our summer learning flyers in each store. The poster will be 22"x28" in full color. I have included a smaller version here for you to see. By the time I had finished that, my group was getting ready to go out to lunch. I had already brought food to eat for lunch, but since it was pay day and I'm easily persuaded to join in some fun I caved and went out with Stacy, Tausha, Blair, Carmen, and Mike to Rafferty's. We arrived shortly after 11:00am and the restaurant was almost completely empty. We asked the hostess to seat us away from everyone else as we knew we would end up being loud, eventually laughing at a story that someone told that wasn't really as funny as we made it out to be. This prediction, of course, came true. I had the chicken finger salad with Honey-Mustard/Bacon-Ranch house dressing. It was delicious and was very filling. When we were leaving everyone told us to have a great day...no one told us to come back though. (hmmm...coincidence?) We returned to work where Mike and I had a brief conversation about theft among our customers, and I found out that the number one category of items stolen in the Georgia stores in Girl Scout supplies. What is this world coming to?! I called Camp Twin Lakes this afternoon to set up our participation in their partners card program. Camp Twin Lakes is a non-profit organization offering year-round recreational, therapeutic and educational programs for children with serious illnesses and life challenges. . The partners card is a card that people purchase that gives them access to take advantage of special discounts at restaurants and retailers November 1st - 9th in exchange for purchasing the $60.00 card. (Similar to the Lifestyles card in Knoxville, but 100% of the money from the cards goes to Camp Twin Lakes) I also worked more on the new catalog cover and checked more items on the website for accuracy.

The work day ended with a group of us making plans to go out Friday night. I was supposed to pick Stacy up around 8:00pm, but I arrived a little late due to traffic. Once she was ready to go we drove not very far away to Bullfrog's Restaurant & Bar. We arrived before everyone else so we grabbed a table before it got too crowded. We sat there for about 30 minutes talking about her Mike issue and issues of my own before we were joined by Blair and her boyfriend Branson. About half an hour later we were also joined by Tausha. She showed up just after the live music for the evening began. We were fortunate enough to be sitting in the middle of the room so we weren't too over blasted by their playing. This evening was a milestone in my life as I can now say that I have seen the band "Mother Truckers" play live in Georgia. They were much better than anticipated based upon their appearances. They played mostly classic Southern rock and they were actually very talented. Their lead guitarist was amazing and the lead singer had the vocal style of AC/DC cloned to perfection. We hung around through several sets of their playing all the while observing the other patrons of the establishment. Sometimes it is just funnier to watch people than to actually pay attention to the main focus of the room. This night was no different. We left Bullfrogs around 12:45am and I dropped Stacy off at her house. Then I sleepily drove home to fall asleep for as long as my body would allow.

Meditation for the day: Luke 15:32 " But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found."