From the Desk 8/13/2008

This morning I woke up a bit later than intended, but somehow managed to not rush getting ready and still mad it to work on time. I spent the morning working on learning more features about MapPoint 2009 and plotting the future stores in the same map as the current stores. I then experimented with plotting demographic data in a 5 mile radius around each store location. This proved to be harder than originally thought. At first it took me a while to figure out how to adjust the place that would show as pushpins when I chose to find place near each store. I finally found the filter settings to allow on the schools to appear when I ran this filter. It is a most useful tool as it not only plots the schools as point on the map, but it includes the full address and phone number for each school. This feature is more useful for plotting locations for future stores to determine a school-rich area in which to plop a store down to serve the community. I eventually realized that althought this program is very sophisticated, it could only map these addresses for a radius around one point at a time. So I played with that a little, testing it out in each of the new locations. I soon realized that it was time to eat and I went into the break room to heat up my chicken, while Stacy and Tausha were running out quickly to pick themselves up some food from Taco Bell.

After being joined by Blair and Carmen, we all ate and talked about how slow the week was going and wondering why it wasn't 5:00 yet. It seemed that I wasn't the only one who had trouble getting up this morning. After playing clean-up and eating one of Tausha's tacos and some of Stacy's Cinnamon Twists I returned to my desk. I spent a little bit of time working on some sketches of the updated website boxes to further prepare for some graphics work on them in the next few days. I played a little bit more with the mapping and discovered that you can draw territories in a radius around each store location which will come in handy later (once I import the zip code sales data from our system). I got slammed with phone calls asking for advertising meetings and donation requests from seemingly everyone in Atlanta, but it was something to pass the time I suppose. 5:00 came all to slowly, but when it finally arrived I was relieved to be heading home. I needed to go to the grocery store, but decided to wait and go after eating some dinner instead of stopping on the way home from work.

I went home and ate a little food (as until I go to the store, a little food is all I have available). I then spent the next 2 hours unintentionally napping on the couch while I was dead to the worked from fatigue. I woke up and decided to delay my trip until the next day after work as i had enough food to last me one more day. I spent some time on Facebook and Myspace and searching for any upcoming concerts that I might want to go to. I talked on the phone with Hickey later in the evening about upcoming weddings and life back in K-town. We also talked about his visit over Labor Day weekend until Christina came over for a bit. Her and Leslie went to the Jack Johnson concert tonight and I would have been with them, but the show was sold out. I heard all about the show and her day. Then I brought out some old pictures that I found when cleaning out my closet in the spare bedroom. They ranged anywhere from trips to Fontana in '99 to Christmas morning when I was around 7 years old. There was even one really old picture from a trip to Waverly, Ohio in which I was captured dancing up the street wearing an over sized hat allowing my then platinum blond hair to peak through under the bill of the hat. We watched part of Dave Matthew's Band on VH1's Storytellers and then it was time to go to sleep. I said goodnight to Christina and fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. Apparently my nap wasn't enough to deter me from sleeping soundly tonight.

Meditation for the day: Romans 14:8 “If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.”