From the Desk 6/23/2008

This Monday morning started off very groggy as I have yet to recover from my lost sleep over the weekend. I didn't have to be at work at 8:00 since I was going back to the tag office to get my car registered and my license plate from Georgia. I arrived there and was about the 8th person in line this time so I was helped almost immediately. Much to my dismay, the insurance information had not yet made its way into the Georgia State system and I would have to wait til another day to finish this process. I arrived at work and began working on the project that would occupy the rest of my day.

I had to finish de-duping the mailing list for the BTS flyer that had already arrived at ABC mail house that morning. I had some obstacles in using the de-duping program as it would only take 50,00 entries at once and I had to filter through over 112,000 entries. After breaking down the addresses into groups of 25,000 I ran each through the filter and then complied the outputed unique addresses into a new file. It took up until 2:00 for this process to finish and by that time I had already had 2 cups of coffee (yes, me drinking coffee to stay alert and somewhat focused). I took a break for some lunch that I picked up at Chick-fil-A since I have yet to go to the grocery store. When I returned from lunch I spent what little amount of the day remained sending out follow-up emails for the Fall catalog printing/delivery logistics. I also shared the news that we would be mailing out 32,691 BTS flyers with "the bosses" who were thrilled. We have been running mailing list building contests with all the retail stores in an effort to gain a larger customer database to increase our marketing efforts. The last flyer we mailed out like this was sent to around 28,000 addresses so growing that by 4,000 names in 3 months was great news!

5:00 came around much faster that I realized and I changed into my clothes to go hiking with Stacy. We went and hiked the loop at Burnt Hickory Rd. We set a fairly aggressive pace as we hiked the 3.5 mile loop in 1 hour. After dropping Stacy off at her car, I realized that the hike had the desired effect and I was very much awake. I went to the apartment and almost immediately began working on video editing (which will consume my nights for the next 2 weeks). Christina called me around 8:00 when she got out of class and invited me to be her date for one of her friend's weddings on Friday night. I graciously accepted and thought that it will be nice to go to a wedding and not have to film it! I finished the video of the Graduate Recognition Service at CBCB and burned the master off to DVD. I straightened and unpacked while the video was rendering and burning and then when it finished I knew I had to get some sleep. I turned in, knowing that I was going to be getting up early (6:00am) every morning this week to work on editing before I go into work.

Meditation for the day: Romans 5:5 "And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us."