From the Desk 6/3/2008

Today I woke up later than planned. I had set my alarm for 6:15 so I could go down to the weight room and lift before work since I always seem to run out of time or hike after work. I got ready as usual and then made my way to work, on the way passing the Exxon station that now is selling gas for…..$3.99 per gallon! Just when you think prices can't go any higher. I got to work and everyone was still as cheerful as they were Friday, which made it a good start to the week. I worked on re-sizing an ad for the Chattanooga Times Free Press, creating an example of a poster/chart storage bag that we are having printed with our logo on it, and various other graphic tasks. I also finished printing everything for the stores monthly retail signs packet and then packaged then in envelopes and placed in the stores' mailboxes for distribution. I worked with Vickie on problems surrounding our new gift card & envelope displays that we finally decided won't work for what we need. Tomorrow we will probably send them back and look for an alternate solution.

For lunch today, I ate a turkey and cheese sandwich with some Doritos. I decided to be good and not go out and eat since I have food that will go bad soon if not consumed. I worked with Stacy, Vickie, and Mike on finalizing most of the details for the Back-to-School flyer that CCC is printing for us later this week. We hope to get them in about 2 weeks so we can take them to Atlanta Business Circulators to be ink jetted with addresses and then mailed to our customers. There is a delicate balance between being on schedule and falling behind. Unfortunately, projects seem to fall into the second category more often than the former. I also worked on entering more names from the door prize registration forms into our customer database. I have entered about 300 so far and hopefully that will be enough to help Taylor get done with the rest by the end of the week. The day was beginning to slow down in terms of business and then Mike asked if I could take him to pick up his car, which was in the shop for routine maintenance. I told him sure. We were going to head over there at 4:00 and then Mike told me to just shut everything down and go ahead and go home after dropping him off. That was nice as it gave me a chance to catch up on some video editing that I desperately needed to do.

I dropped Mike off and then went to work immediately on editing the School Box footage for the Summer Training Seminar. It took me about 2 hours to get everything edited and burned over to disc. Hopefully, everyone will be happy with their speeches and we will not have to re-shoot any scenes later. I then took a break and ate some dinner. I also apparently needed to take a nap as I fell asleep while watching Two and a Half Men and woke up about an hour later. I felt refreshed and went to work on the reception video. I also talked with Hickey about our potential trip to Charleston and he told me that he was able to get off work and we were good to go! That was very exciting news. Not that I really need a break because my life is going really well right now, but I will jump at every chance I get to go take a break before the back-to-school rush comes. I took care of more emails and wedding paperwork before calling it a night and falling into sleep almost as soon as my head it the pillow.

Meditation for the day: Ecclesiastes 4:10 "If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!"