From the Desk 5/2/2008

Today I arrived at work anticipating a full day, and I was not disappointed. I worked on trimming some retail signs to send out to the stores on Monday as well as finishing the binders and backpacks discount sign. I explored some effects to tweak the apple graphic for the summer catalog cover and then it was time for my first meeting of the day. At 10:00am Chris, Mike, Vickie, and I met with Blake, who helps do some of our website design and special email blasts. We talked about new options for design upgrades for the website and what specifically we want to have control over as opposed to Objectware, the company that is responsible for building/maintaining our website. That meeting resulted in several new ideas and suggestions to explore for our website which I never thought of as being another store of its own, but it really does need to be treated that way. That meeting ran over until 11:15am. Then Mike and I hopped in his car and drove to Marietta to tour/meet with the owners of Atlanta Business Circulators, an independent mailing house. The owner John was very enthusiastic and seemed very knowledgeable about his company and the business in general. I think that we will probably send at least a small project his way to test for pricing and turn-around time. We batted ideas around about what he could do for us and what we were looking for. We left there around 11:55 and Mike suggested we eat some lunch while we were in the neighborhood of several restaurants. I agreed and we then attempted to decide on a place. We drove past the big chicken (I've finally seen it with my own eyes!) and then settled on Marietta Diner as our lunch destination. I highly recommend this for a meal any time of the day, as they are open 24 hours a day. They serve anything from breakfast to burgers to Greek to seafood to Italian dishes and it all looks delicious. They also make their own cherry Coke and desserts.

While eating we had a good chance to talk about my frustrations with not having enough to do to fill up my days. Part of that, I know, is that as time goes on I will become busier with more responsibilities that I take on. The other part is that some things that I should be handling or at least take part in, I am not being involved. This situation is delicate and I will talk to Dave about it next week to see if some things can be fixed/handed over to me. Mike also suggested that I do something to really show that I'm ready to take on this job's full responsibilities and maybe that would help ease Dave into handing these things over to me. He suggested that I research and create a presentation on developing our customer loyalty program. So for a large part of the afternoon I did research and wrote down an outline for what I need to develop this program. I also got word from the warehouse crew that the summer learning inserts had arrived from The Marietta Daily Journal printers and needed to be divided into the correct amounts on separate palettes to go to Knox and Chatt. Thankfully they were divided into boxes of 2,000 flyers in each box. This made dividing the 46,077 flyers to Chattanooga and 33,309 flyers to Knoxville a much easier and less time consuming task than originally expected. I finished up with that and then designed the buttons that each employee will receive at the summer training in June. Once that was done it was getting around 5:00 and I packed up my stuff to head home for a couple of hours.

I chilled at the apartment for a while and then met Stacy, Corey, Corey's husband Jeff, and Corey's friend Kendra at Taco Mac for dinner and drinks. I had their boneless buffalo wings in medium sauce with fries. It was very tasty and was just the right amount of food to fill me, but not make me too full. We left there and met Tausha at Regal Cinemas 16 near Town Center Mall to see the 10:00pm showing of the movie Baby Momma. It is the story of a career driven woman who wants to have a baby, but through her own physical problem is unable to conceive so she hires a surrogate mother. The movie chronicles their lives together through this process and how they each teach each other to look at life differently. It was a funny movie that had some surprisingly tender moments. After the movie we all said goodbye and then went our separate ways. I returned to the apartment and decided to do some quick packing for tomorrow's trip to K-town. I then decided just as quickly to get some sleep knowing I would have to drive the 3 hours tomorrow, probably in rain and thunderstorms according to the weather predictions.

Meditation for the day: Ephesians 1:7 "In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace"