From the Desk 7/16/2008

This morning I wore shorts and a t-shirt to work as we would be working the majority of the day in the overflow warehouse which has no air conditioning. It was nice to help out and to do something different for a day or two so the heat wasn't really an issue that I was worried about. I answered a few emails before Corey, Stacy and I piled into my car and drove down the road a mile or so to the rented warehouse site. We walked in and were surprised at the size of the facility. It had very high ceilings and 8 loading docks. We took advantage of 4 of the loading docks by opening the doors to provide both air circulation and light to help us see since we couldn't find where to turn on the lights. Our mission for the day was a fairly aggressive one. We were to check-in and split-out two very large shipments from two of our vendors. We developed our system for keeping things organized and got to work around 9:15. It was a chore that we knew would take a while so we paced ourselves to last for the majority of the day in this warehouse. We worked until 11:00 and then went to Jersey Mike's for some lunch. We ate and it instantly became a new favorite place for me to eat as the Italian sub I ate was delicious and they were playing the entire "Crash" CD by Dave Matthews Band. After cooling off and feeling full we returned to the main store to procure more box labels for each store's shipments.

We returned to the other warehouse to finish up these two shipments. After we finished them we began stacking everything on pallets so they could be transferred to our main warehouse and then shipped out to the stores for stock. That process took a while and it was fairly tiring as by this point we had been walking back and forth non-stop for about 4 hours. We finished up everything we could do with the shipments we were working on around 3:00. We counted and had checked in, labeled, and stacked 26 pallets of product for the stores! Needless to say we were tired, but that didn't mean that our day was over yet. We returned to the main warehouse and proceeded to check-in and put away an additional 6 pallets of product. Once I returned to my desk I answered several emails and listened to several voice messages. The original plan had been to go hike at a new trail (Pine Log Creek) after work today, but we were all too tired to even think about doing that.

I went home and promptly took a shower to remove the sweat and mostly dirt/dust from handling the pallets all day. I ate a quick bite and started a load of laundry. Christina called around 7:45 and told me she was out of class. She invited me over to watch a movie and since we are both indecisive I brought about 6 to choose from. We settled on watching "The Exorcism of Emily Rose". I hadn't seen this movie in a long time, and had forgotten how good it was. It is a "horror" movie, but the way that this movie impacts me is in the knowledge that the supernatural things that take place in the movie (i.e. demon possession) really happen and that makes it more terrifying. Christina had never seen it and she enjoyed the movie. She also cited the scary reality that things like this really do happen. After the movie we just sat on the couch talking about our families (mostly extended families, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.). It was really nice to get to know more about her family and I enjoyed telling her about mine (don't worry, it was all good things) I left after a while and headed home to go to sleep. I knew I would need rest because we were going to work in the main warehouse tomorrow checking in more shipments.

Meditation for the day: Proverbs 14:23 " All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty."