From the Desk 7/24/2008

This morning I got to work after a stop off by Chick-fil-A for some food. I began working in the warehouse around 8:30 after getting a few things out of the way for the marketing department (aka: me) I was going to be working on packing up the orders that people had pulled to go to schools. This was a new process for me on this particular system, but I worked with Glen and he taught me everything I would need to know to get by. I acclimated myself to the surroundings in the warehouse rather quickly and helped them stay on top of packing. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Christina had also been selected to pull orders for the day. I joked with her that things were reversed from the normal order. I usually create signs that they have to put out, creating work for her. Today, she was pulling orders for me to pack, so she was creating work for me. I worked on packing for about 2 and a half hours until 11:00. Then I returned to my desk to check on things before joining "the family" for lunch in the break room.

After enjoying some delicious left-overs for lunch, I returned to the warehouse. I packed for about 2 hours before we had caught up and reached a dry spell as the people packing had gone to lunch so the flow of orders to pack had ceased. At that point I actually pulled a few orders myself (making sure that there were only items in the warehouse on my orders.....I know where nothing on the sales floor). This went better than expected, but created a problem in that the orders that I pulled, someone else had to pack. So, there was still an issue of steady work for everyone to do. The packers returned from lunch and the orders began to flow again. I worked on packing up orders until 5:20 and realized that I needed to go home and change before picking up Christina and meeting Mike for a hike.

At 6:00 I picked up Christina from the Box and we hit the road to the Pine Log Creek Trail, which is slightly further away than the Pine Mountain Trail. It took about 35 minutes to reach the trail parking lot, which I passed as the entrance was hidden by several trees. We hiked the 4.5 mile trail and it appeared to be not very difficult in terms of elevation changes according to the trail map. It lied. It is true that you only climb 200-300 feet over the course of the trail. It failed to mention that you would make this change about 7 times! There were several foot bridges we crossed and there were two overlooks. The overlooks were not particularly stunning, but then again, we weren't very high up either. We encountered only one other group of people on the trail and we almost gained a dog, MJ, in the process as he wouldn't leave to go with his group once he saw Mike's dog, Cheyenne. After walking MJ back to his owners, we continued on the trail. Once we had completed half of the West Loop and half of the East Loop we reached a quarry and stopped for some photos and a break. We pushed on to finish the trail and arrived at the parking lot about 1 hour and 45 minutes after we began. We were all tired as the day's activities at work had drained most of our energy. We drove our separate ways and I dropped Christina off at the Box to get her car. I went home and showered (I really smelled bad by that point) and then got a call from Christina. I went over to her apartment to watch a couple of episodes of "Boy Meets World" before calling it a night and heading home just in time to fall asleep the instant my head hit the pillow.

Meditation for the day: Psalm 119:60 “I will hasten and not delay to obey your commands.”