From the Desk 8/1/2008

Happy August! I'm not really sure where July went, but apparently it wasn't a bad month because it didn't seem to stick around for long. I woke up this morning and went into work dressed in my regular attire as I was actually going to be in the office all day today. I worked in the morning on getting an update on our fall catalog mailing, searching the media outlets to see if our stores appeared anywhere we didn't know of, and tweaking some signs with correct prices. I also added an idea I had for the new catalog cover while driving to Stacy's to the list of possibilities to consider. I worked up until around 11:30 when Chris arrived with lunch for everyone. We had turkey and cheese subs, chips, and cookies. It is really refreshing to know that the company you work for, doing what you love, also cares about its employees.

I watched a couple of episodes of That 70's Show at my desk as the tables in the break room were taken over by trays of food. I returned from lunch to work on another project having to deal with the website. I needed to add two more documents to the manager's page and fix the links on about 4 other documents. The last time I tried to add documents to the site, it crashed and was down for about 4 days. This time the results were much better. I not only fixed the broken links, but added the new documents without any catastrophic results. I think that I'm beginning to understand more how html editing works. That process took quite a bit of time to complete and then I had to update some email marketing tools for Kenny to use for the TN store accounts. They simply needed the newest catalog cover on them so they would seem fresh and new to the customers when they open them. I updated them for the various discount levels and also made a sign to promote the rest mats at the correct price. (the sign was rather old and the prices have changed twice in the past 6 months) After that I received a text from Christina telling me that she was stuck at a gas station when her car wouldn't start. Her dad was going to be able to get there fairly soon to look at it so she told me when I offered to come sit with her that it was ok. We planned to go to a concert by Adrianne tonight in downtown Atlanta, but due to this new occurrence I wasn't sure if we would be able to make it or not. 5:00 rolled around and once I double checked to make sure Christina was ok I headed home.

Christina called me to let me know that her car was fixed after they replaced the battery. She went home and showered and then came over around 8:00. We decided that we would most likely miss Arianne's portion of the concert since she went on at 8:00 so we went to get some dinner at Las Palmos (where we had our first date). We returned to the apartment and watched the new episode of "Psych" and an episode of "House" before I fell asleep for about an hour or so. Christina woke me up and I walked her to her car so she could go home for the evening. I went to sleep with mixed feelings about the drive to Knoxville tomorrow. On one hand I really missed my friends and family and wanted to see them, but on the hand I wasn't thrilled at the idea of buying the gas to get there and back or to take the time necessary to drive the distance. I seemed to have no trouble falling sleep though and thinking back on the evening I went to sleep with a smile on my face thinking back to our (Christina and I) first date.

Meditation for the day: Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 "Two are better than one. If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who fall and has no one to help him up!"