From the Desk 7/10/2008

This morning I woke up to the sounds of the lawn care company mowing and weed eating beginning at 7:00am. My guess is they were forced to get an unusually early start due to the weather this week. It seems that it can be sunshine and blue skies one minute and the next lightning is hitting everything in a 10 mile radius and the rain is coming down so hard you can barely see. I thought that weather was common only in Florida, but apparently I was wrong. I worked with Mike this morning to create our own graphic to update the header on www.schoolbox.com to announce the details about the GA Classroom Gift Card and contest that is sponsored by one of our vendors, Carson-Dellosa. We were supposed to have this done on Monday, but the guy we normally work with on these projects wasn't responding to our emails/phone calls so we had to take measures into our own hands and figure out how to do it ourselves. It really wasn't difficult to do and we will more than likely be updating lots of the headers ourselves to ensure they are done in a timely manner. I was treated to lunch today by Becky Morris, our rep from News For Kids, a program that we have sponsored since its inception that helps promote literacy through providing newspapers to classrooms as a teaching tool.

We talked about the changes in the program and what new tools they are going to provide to keep the program fresh and effective. We ate at T.G.I.Friday's since it was close and if you have the opportunity to try the new Red Pepper Chicken & Sausage Penne dish I highly recommend it. We also talked about how she came to be in her position and how I came to be where I am. It always amazes me how people take different paths, but always seem, eventually, to end up right where they are supposed to be and doing what they love. After lunch she drove me back to the store and then gave me a bag of gifts for Chris, Dave, Carmen (who helped her immensely in connecting us on the phone) and me. It contained a glass with the new News For Kids logo and a flashlight key chain. I thanked her for lunch and we set a meeting to discuss our renewal procedure with Dave. The rest of the afternoon was spent finishing the mailing list for our catalog mail out. 5:00 arrived and I headed home after saying goodbye to Christina.

I got a call from Christina after she got off work at 6 and soon after I went over to her place to hang out. We were watching Jeopardy (which I normally know some of the answers, but not tonight...) Wheel of Fortune, and Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? while we waited for Leslie to get off work. Leslie and her fiance Bill came over and we watched Batman Begins in honor of the next installment of the series, The Dark Knight, which comes out next Friday. It was a good movie, but about halfway through I realized that I was very tired as I caught myself allowing my head to droop a little at some parts. After the movie was over we all said goodbye and went our separate ways. I got home and quickly fell asleep, knowing that tomorrow was Friday and smiling because today was good day.

Meditation for the day: Matthews 4:$4 “Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”