WARNING: Brainstorms can lead to flash floods!

Today began in the normal way. The sun rose, it got light, and I was interrupted from deep sleep by my screeching alarm clock. I got to work a little early and started gathering all of my information on the various advertising, sponsorship, and donation offers we have been hit with over the past week and a half. I had close to 20 items to discuss with Dave and we hit all of them in our 45 minute meeting. I also had some more tasks given to me after that to work on analyzing our ad budget and seeing where the majority of our expenditures occur. I was glad to finally see the end figure for what our advertising/marketing budget is per year so I can get a better idea of what type of things/money we will invest in for the future. I downloaded a new program call MacOSaiX that is designed to take a base picture and then pull pictures from a specified location to create a mosaic tile picture from small tiles of each picture. To better explain it, I used this program to take pictures of our products and apply them to an apple for a possibility for a new cover on our Summer catalog mailing. Let me know what you think (sorry the color is messed up, who knows why). I had the girls pick me up a milkshake from McDonald's when they ventured out for lunch today and I must say that it hit the spot. I worked on various versions of the catalog cover before meeting with Chris today at 1:00pm. We went over everything that needed to be done to prepare for Customer Appreciation Week, May 5th-9th. We also planned out everything that needed to be done to get the gift certificate letters out to our top customers by the end of next week. Printing the signs for Customer Appreciation Week, making posters to promote that week, and working on some other signage kept me occupied for the remainder of the work day. I started the work day not having much to do then I get flooded with things to do. It reminds me of a quote for Gone in 60 Seconds: "It never rains, but it pours" (I really have no idea why I thought of that other than my continued references to water related weather occurrences!?)

I fixed some Velveeta cheese shells for dinner along with some garlic toast and then talked on the phone with Amy for a while. She called to tell me that Jon/Hickey/Charlie's team had won their basketball game and that meant they were headed to the final game next Monday! It is really astonishing to think that they have come this far because last year they didn't make it past the first round of the playoffs! I then went to work on the reception video. I worked on it for a couple of hours, but didn't feel like I made any progress. I will have to spend lots of time on Saturday finishing the video up and then mail it out on Monday morning. I decided to call it quits on editing for the night and relax for an hour before I retired for the evening. I caught the last part of Double Jeopardy on FX and was reminded that it is a fairly suspenseful movie. I turned out the lights seeking more rest in preparation for another Friday night out on the town with my friends here in GA.

Meditation for the day: John 16:24 "Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete."