Going for a swim

I packed and re-arranged a few last minute things in my pack before Jubin arrived to pick me up around 1:00pm. We hosed off his tarp from his last outdoor adventure (it was growing green stuff) and loaded up the Mini and hit the road. We drove up through Townsend and stopped at the Subway to grab some lunch. This has to be the most unique Subway I've ever been to. They serve breakfast sandwiches (which last time I checked, Subway doesn't do breakfast) and they also serve Breyer's ice cream! I suppose with it being in the middle of nowhere in Townsend the owners can do whatever they want. We drove up into Cades Cove for a bit and filled out our back country camping permit. We then drove (with only a few wrong turns) up through the winding hills of Laurel Valley Mountain Homes and arrived at our trail head around 3:00.

It had already begun raining lightly by the time we stepped onto the trail to journey towards solitude. We made fairly good time. It was 2.3 miles to the campsite and we arrived there after only 45 minutes of hiking. Most of the trail was downhill, and there would have been some great views that I would share with you all through pictures, but the rainclouds and fog only allowed us to see about 30 feet in from of us. We were completely soaked by the time we reached the campsite, and were greeted by 6 other campers that had been there for a bit. They had a good fire going and it seemed that the rain might let up soon. It did not let up at all and only proved to rain harder the instant we tried to get our own fire built. We gathered lots of wood and then proceeded to try the impossible: start a fire using wet wood. We used three starter logs, two fire pouches, and a butane lighter to give it our best shot. It worked for quite a while and we actually saw about a 10 inch high flame at one point. The rain continued to pour down, and I thought we were soaked before, but I was wrong. Every time I moved water squished from either my shoes, my pants, or my hands (they were very pruney by this point) The other campers packed everything they had brought and loaded their camp up and headed out. They decide that it just wasn't worth it, and they may have had the right idea. We were considering leaving ourselves, and as the rain continued to pour we taed more seriously about it. We have never backed out because of weather, but we also had not experienced this level of rain that showed no signs of letting up. We came to a point and decided that this was not good or safe to stay, and if were going to head out we needed to do so then so we would have enough daylight left to see the trail. We packed everything up quickly, letting the rain kill our fire for us, and hit the trail for the return hike around 6:55pm. As we left the campsite we saw why the other group left earlier. Their roaring fire had been silenced because the fire pit, the campsite, and the trail head were all under about 2 inches of water. We knew at this point we would have been swimming not sleeping for the remainder of the night. We slipped, stumbled, and "swam" our way back up the trail. There were many points where the water was 3 inches deep and covered the entire path forcing us to walk along the side of the mountain to avoid getting our shoes stuck in the muck. We pushed ourselves as hard as we could to get out fast, but could only go so fast at some points to avoid slipping down the side of the mountain.

We arrived back at the trail head around 7:45pm and loaded up the car. We realized that we would be soaked the entire drive back home, but we didn't care because we would at least be shielded from any further exposure to the rain. I kept my part of our deal when we were talking about leaving the campsite. We stopped off at the Golden Corral restaurant for dinner, my treat, and then we went to Jubin's house to stay the night, his treat. We watched the tail end of the UNC vs. Kansas game and then watched Pirate of the Caribbean 3: At World's End, before falling asleep for the night. I was still water logged when I laid down to go to sleep, but at least Jubin had let me use his dryer to dry my clothes in stages so I wouldn't be sleeping in wet clothes all night. I went to sleep wondering how much more the campsite had become flooded since we made the smart choice to leave.

Meditation of the day: "Life is a series of emtions". "My favorite verse in the Bible is: And it came to pass. It didn't come to stay. If you're life is terrible right, don't worry it will pass."

~ Mark Lowry

I'd rather be hiking the AT

Today as I woke up (at 6:15 for some reason, unable to return to my nap) I wished it was already Saturday and we were on the trail to explore a new place. This, of course, was not reality and soon I had to get myself focused on what I had to do today at work. I arrived at work to find that my feelings about today were aligned to everyone else's; is it 5 o'clock yet? I worked for just a bit on the mailing list before I finally gained access to MDR (Market Data Research), a company that specializes in data in the education market. I have been trying over the past two days to give these people our money in exchange for an access code to gain the use of their data to compile mailing lists and target specific areas for future flyers. You would think that a business would be interested in taking some one's money, but apparently they had better things to do. After we cleared up confusions on their end, they emailed me the access code and I began to play around with manipulating the data for our benefit. I found even more elementary schools to send the Early Childhood flyer to and hopefully with some more time, I will grow this list by leaps and bounds for future endeavors. I actually stayed in the office today to eat lunch. I had another pre-packaged salad from Publix with some Cheddar Triscuits for a side item. I met with Chris for about half an hour to discuss projects for me to work on next week while her , Dave, and their kids are away for Spring Break. I worked on getting the graphics ready for printing the envelopes for our gift certificate letter to the schools. I mostly was unfocused and found myself checking the weather forecasts for our hiking area every 10 minutes. I was alerted to the worsening weather conditions when we all hovered in the center of our office (not for safety but to discuss the days events) due to the sounding of the tornado sirens. We found that we were under a tornado watch that had been upgraded from the earlier warning. (Note the massive amounts of yellow and red on the Doppler photo from www.weather.com) The sirens remained on for only a limited time and then things returned to normal.The end of the day finally arrived and I headed home to pack some last minute items, change clothes, and then hit the road to Knoxville. The sirens sounded again as I was getting my mail at the apartment, but by this point I figured if something were truly wrong, I'd know it.

My drive to Knoxville was filled with lots of traffic, heavy rains, and people that don't know how to drive in the rain. I was slowed down before I got to Chattanooga when traffic came to a stand still and then crawled the remaining 5 miles to the split towards Knoxville. I never saw anything that would explain this occurrence, but I attribute it to people slowing down to look at wrecks on the opposite side of the interstate. My evening in Knoxville was very similar to most of my Friday nights. Drop stuff off at the parents' house, hang at Movies 4 Sale, and then off to Applebee's (the highlight of the evening). It was only Jared, Hickey, and I tonight, but Megan, our server, was in a better mood this week so it was ok. I drove Hickey tonight as he looked like he was in need of a drink and was unsure about having 1 drink and then driving. So he enjoyed the evening like the rest of us. We left around 1:00am and I drove Hickey back to his parent's house where we dropped off his car after Movies 4 Sale closed for the night. I drove home to my parents house where I fell asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow. I guess driving in the rain for 3 hours will make anyone tired.

Mediation of the day: Psalm 5:11 "But let all who take refuge in you be glad; let them ever sing for joy. Spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may rejoice in you."

It's almost Friday!

Today I woke up after getting some extra sleep and felt refreshed. That feeling disappeared after I walked outside to leave for work. The sky was overcast and the air smelled of rain. My car also had pollen on it in such amounts that I can compare the hood of my car to a beach with the wind blowing the pollen around like loose sand. This will undoubtedly do wonders for my allergies and is sure to keep the Kleenex industry posting profits for their next quarter. I spent the majority of the day at work again working on creating a larger mailing list for our Early Childhood piece. I made great strides in building the list for Knoxville businesses where as yesterday's main focus was the metro Atlanta area. I took a break for lunch at McAlister's Deli where I met Ed Barker. Ed is the engineering adviser/leader for a high school team that participates in robotics competitions and design competitions. He is employed by Kell Robotics which is a firm that specializes in designing, building, and implementing robotics to help clean up the environment. You can check out their site here: http://www.kellrobotics.org . We batted ideas around about how The School Box could support this effort while still benefiting our business at the same time. It will be interesting to see where these talks go once I meet with Dave. I see the merit in supporting the 3rd grade art contest associated with this, but I don't see us spending much money to support this effort since it only involves 3rd graders in Cobb County. I returned from lunch and began to work on the mailing list yet again. I took a break every now and then to print the remaining flyers promoting the Bright From the Start workshops that will take place here in the Summer. The copier was playing nice today and I did not have to threaten it to make it work correctly. (Operator error you say? I'm sticking with my analysis of it begin possessed by one or more demons) The rest of the work day crept along and five o'clock came, but only after what seemed like 3 days.

I went home to eat some of my newly purchase food. It took me almost as long to decide what to eat as it did when I didn't have hardly any food, except now my problem is choosing from all my options. I selected the Santa Fe Chicken Caesar salad. It was a good choice as it filled me up and was somewhat healthy. I then realized that I needed to get my hiking pack ready for the weekend trip with Jubin. I pulled out all of my supplies and then began the difficult process of deciding what not to pack. I always follow the same process when preparing for a trip like this. I put everything in the pack and then remove 5 items that are not absolutely necessary to get rid of some unneeded weight. I finished after about half an hour and then decided to weigh my pack to see how I balanced things out and to determine how much weight I would be carrying. It weighed 24 pounds (close to my best weight, my worst being 34 pounds) as you can see by the picture here. I spent the remainder of the evening working on a special video project for Leslie and trying to motivate myself to start on the reception video. I hope that the weather will hold off for at least part of my drive up to Knoxville tomorrow evening.

Meditation for the day: Proverbs 19:22a "What a man desires is unfailing love"

Manager's Meeting Madness

Today was the company wide manager's meeting that has been hyped for quite some time now. The regional managers have been furiously working on new employee handbooks, register manuals, and manager guides for over 3 months now. Over the past few days I have helped print and assemble these books and was curious if the day would ever come that our office would return to normal and the mounds of pages and binders would disappear. They vanished today and made their way into the hands of the 14 managers that convened on our store today. The meetings were going well from what I heard, but they also lasted longer than intended. The meetings started around 9:00am and then (with a few breaks including lunch) they dismissed sometime after 5:30pm. I worked on only one thing today: the mailing list for a second wave of the Early Childhood flyers. I didn't think it would take that much time to find and type in 245 new businesses to send our information to, but apparently it did (or I'm really slow at typing). I also was about to drop-kick the copier towards the end of the day today as it seemed determined to do anything but what I wanted. (can we get an exorcist to fix this devilish machine?)

As the work day came to a close Stacy and I talked about our dinner plans with Leslie tonight. We decided that since she was still in the manager's meeting we would eat at home and then meet-up later for some drinks. Stacy offered for me to join her at Publix to do some grocery shopping, and since I officially ran out of all food at my apartment the night before I was eager to do some shopping. We met at Publix and apparently I really did have no food as my purchase was insane at $172! This amount seems absurd, but I will probably not have to go grocery shopping again for another 4 weeks so that thought kept me from having a stroke at the checkout line. We went our separate ways and then as I almost got done putting my purchases away at the apartment I got a call from Stacy. Leslie was done with the meeting and opted not to go eat with the other managers for dinner, but instead would join us at T.G.I.Friday's for some food and fun. (see we're important to someone down here in GA!)

We met around 6:30 to begin our evening of mischief. Little did I know how much mischief there would be...you can see the picture of my partners in crime here. (See they're not imaginary friends. They're real people!) I had the Cheesy Bacon Cheeseburger which I have not had in quite a while. It is one of the best inventions since the wheel! Let me describe it to you: a basic cheeseburger with all the usual condiments, but then they put a fried mozzarella patty on top to compliment the healthy traits of this meal choice. Two words for you if you don't believe in the tastiness of this dish: try it. Throughout dinner there were many comments some of which I will post here as simple quotes, but do not read into their meaning because they were situational and sometimes I only heard half of what was said leading up to them which added to their randomness. Here it goes...

Me to Leslie: "Thank you"
Stacy to Leslie: "Do me, do me!"

Me to Stacy: "I'll mow the grass, you cook the food"
Stacy to me: "I'm going to call you my little migrant worker from now on!"

Me to Leslie: "If Brian starts to get jealous, just tell him I'm gay. That should work."
Stacy to me: "If I meet a boy and he asks about us hanging out all the time, to him you are gay!"

Server to us: "Everything good here?"
Stacy to server: "She needs another beer. Gotta keep my girl happy!"

Those were just some of the great conversations that took place during our "weekly date". I went home and worked on the reception video for just a bit, but soon found myself overwhelmed with feelings of fatigue. I gave in soon after that and actually went to bed early for a change. I went to sleep with the last thing on my mind being the mountains and the backpacking trip coming up this weekend. I really need yet another escape from reality, and I'm not sure why this time. Oh well, I will leave you with this:

Meditation of the day: 1 Corinthians 2:4-5 "My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power."

Tricky Tuesday

Today marked the beginning of April, or more importantly April Fool's Day. After contemplating a variety of tricks that I might employ on this day of fun, I decided to refrain since my ideas were not very good and I really didn't have time to cook up something worthy of mentioning. So I carried on at work as usual, working on researching more day cares, preschools, churches, and schools that we could send the remaining early childhood flyer to. I also created a flyer to promote awareness of the Bright From the Start summer workshop series that teachers can attend to earn 2 credit hours of training for the year. I struggled to come up with a creative idea for how best to catch people's eye, while still make the information easy to absorb. I finally hit a break through and decided to use spot color to draw people's attention to certain parts of the flyer to draw them in and then let them read the information once interested. I had just put the finishing touches on it when Chris came by and told me that we needed to print this in black and white on colored paper. I was slightly frustrated, but soon re-worked it to use the black and white contrast to achieve the same desired effect. I worked on generating more mailing lists for the remainder of the day and left work at 5:15pm when I stopped to look at the clock and realized it was past time to go.

I fixed an exquisite dinner for myself tonight; 2 bowls of Raisin Bran Crunch! I also continued my effort on completing the wedding video from 2 weeks ago. I put the menu links in place and then ran a test of the menus to make sure all was in order. I then let the computer expend as much energy as possible as it was making it usual loud whirring noises as the DVD rendered, then burned to disc. It ran without any glitches and completed just before I went to bed. While I left my computer to do the thinking, I turned on the TV just in time to watch the Lady Vols vs. Texas A&M basketball game. It was a good game with both teams seeming to be evenly talented. Candice Parker ran the offense almost by herself and was finding great success in doing so until she dislocated her shoulder not once, but twice! She left the game and didn't return until halfway through the second half. The Lady Vols struggled without their leader on the floor, but through their fierce defense, they managed to keep the Aggies largely at bay. Parker returned and instantly the team began to play better. They finished the game with a win by a score of 53-45. Once the game was over I began to set up the next video project file so tomorrow night I could work on the reception video. I checked a few things online and then decided to get some sleep for the evening after listening to Stacy talk about her frustrations with certain males for a bit. I found out that apparently I'm a good listener as I truly listen and don't always offer advice on how to fix things. I will leave you with a couple of thoughts I penned during our conversation as they were deemed wise by someone (they must be foolish if they came from me)

"Sometime life's greatest mysteries are there to protect us from life's greatest failures"

"We can't explain our feelings, we can only act on them or hide them. Either way they impact our lives on a daily basis"

Meditation for the day: Proverbs 16:3 "Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and your plans will succeed."

As March marches on

Today is the last day of March and I must say that the month passed more quickly than I anticipated. I woke up and went through my normal routine to get ready for work. The weather was much colder today than I remember it being forecast. I went to work without a coat and nearly froze until my car heated up. I worked more on the furniture selling guide for our larger stores today. I also made the final revisions on the gift certificate letter & envelope so we can get them to the printer by the end of the week. I also made arrangements with a gentleman from Kell Robotics to meet for lunch (his treat) to further discuss how The School Box could support the robotic competition in the schools for the next year. There are some perks to having people wanting you to give them money...free food! The rest of the day passed as I helped Aimee and Mike assemble the Manager's guides and register guides to hand out at the managers' meeting on Wednesday. It was a fairly large job for our copier to handle. We printed 20 copies of the 121 page book and it took most of the afternoon to put all the pages in binders and add the cover sheets and example materials. Just before leaving work Stacy asked if I wanted to go walking in her neighborhood again since it was supposed to rain the next couple of days. I said sure and then went home to change after work.

We decided it was best to walk as close to after work as possible since it was slightly cool and would only become colder as the sun went down. I drove to her house and then we walked around for about an hour until we were satisfied with our efforts at exercise. We the returned to Stacy's house where we were greeted by Cooper. He actually recognized me this time and we did not have to go through our usual reminders that we have met many times before. Stacy offered to fix dinner for us and I graciously accepted her offer and asked if there was anything I could do for her. So...I took out the trash and broke down some boxes in her garage that she had not collapsed from her move in January. I also loaded up an extra microwave into her truck so she could take it to work to deal with the waiting problem for the microwave in the break room. We ate some rice with Kung Pao chicken. I will find out the name of the kit she used to make it because it was almost P.F. Chang's quality and all should try it! We finished dinner, cleaned up, and then watched part of Wedding Crashers while enjoying some ice cream (mint chocolate chip to be precise).

I returned home shortly after finishing dessert and began to unpack from my weekend and do some laundry (does it ever end?). I also worked more on the video and should finish the ceremony video tomorrow night. I must now go to sleep to continue my recovery from the somewhat sleepless weekend.

Meditation of the day: Titus 2:11-12 "For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age"

Re-cap of the weekend

Friday, March 28:

Work today seemed to drag on for a while, but then after lunch time seemed to pass fairly quickly. I ran home on my lunch break and grabbed a quick bit before packing as fast as I could for my journey back to Knoxville for the weekend. When I left work I went home for about an hour before hitting the road. I decided that there was no need to rush since the first activity I needed to be anywhere at a specific time was not until 11:00pm. I arrived in Knoxville around 8:30pm and dropped off my luggage at my parents' house before making my traditional Friday night visit to Movies 4 Sales to watch movies, kill time, and ultimately hang out with Hickey. When I got there I also met the newest employee Lori. We all three spent a bit of time talking about relationships and their deterioration process. I also was quite surprised to see that Lori actually did work while being paid to be at the store. This is a rare quality in the majority of Movies 4 Sale employees, so I'm sure Hickey was thrilled that they were scheduled together so he didn't have to do everything himself. We closed up the store around 10:55pm and then headed to our Friday night chill spot: Applebee's. While there we all pretty much had the usual and Megan our server was in a bad mood. There were some "fashionably dressed" college girls sitting at the bar attempting to flirt with her boyfriend, the bartender. We joked with her and attempted to raise her spirits. We're not actually sure if we accomplished that or not. She was smiling, but we think it was to mask her anger. After we helped them close down (basically by sitting and laughing with the employees till 1am) Hickey drove me back to my car and I made my way to Le Chateau de Taylor to retire for the evening.

Saturday, March 29:
I woke up still feeling a little tired from my Applebee's trip the night before, but I'm willing to sacrifice some sleep in order to have some fun. I ate breakfast with mom and dad and then headed off for my day's activities. While I was getting allergy shots, the shot nurse said something that struck me as odd but ultimately true. We were conversing about the weather and I remarked that I wished it was perfect weather as it had been a few days earlier. She replied that she wished it could be perfect weather every day. Then she followed with a comment that made me stop and think, pondering its deeper meaning. She said, "but if we always got what we wanted [the weather] then life would be pretty boring." This stuck with me as highly illogical but completely true. If we went through our lives always happy and completely satisfied, life wouldn't be interesting. It would seem at that point that being happy would no longer be a good thing because we would all be the same and life would never change. After the epiphany-like phrase uttered by the shot nurse I drove out to Victor Ashe Park to meet Jubin for some frisbee golf on the wet and muddy course. We both played much better than the time before and I almost sank a shot from over 100 feet from the basket! I left there and ran to The School Box location near West Town Mall to drop off some items for them to display and to do some quick work for Sue, our sales rep. It was nice to see all of my friends again and everyone seems to be doing quite well. While there I purchased 2 tickets for a Dave Matthews Band concert at the Lakewood Amphitheater in July! I haven't seen Dave Matthews Band since I was a senior in high school, but it was still the best concert I have ever been to so I wasn't against paying a much higher price than I usually would to go to a concert. I grabbed some lunch and took it to Hickey at Movies 4 Sale where I hung out watching part of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy until I returned home to relax for a while. I watched V for Vendetta and took a nap during parts of the movie no doubt as my body was trying to comprehend its own stupidity for not getting enough sleep the night before. I woke up when dad came home and then shortly after Hickey picked me up. We drove around for a bit not able to make a decision on what to do with the evening. We decided (with help from Amy) to grab a bite to eat and then go for some ice cream. We stopped and ate at Long John Silver's on Clinton Highway. I wasn't all that hungry as I had sneaked a piece of pizza from dad before I left. So I did the healthy thing and ate light (if you can call eating 11 hush puppies light!) I took a classic picture to capture my choice and as evidence that I really did eat there (I'm not really fond of this particular fast food chain). Afterwards we met Amy, Jon, Charlie, and Stephanie at Baskin Robbins to eat some more health food. While we were there enjoying our frozen treats we observed some peculiar behavior. We were sitting there minding our own business when we saw a person wearing a large cup box as body cover and a smaller box box with holes cut in it for sight purposes walking in the door. They walked through one door and then continued straight through, leaving by the door on the opposite side of the ice cream shop. I managed to snag a great picture of this occurrence, signifying my most memorable experience while eating ice cream. Hickey and I drove around after that contemplating the meaning of life in general and found ourselves at the Walkers where we hung out with Kiera, Kandi, and Ryan for the remainder of the evening. It was lots of fun as we all told various stories of things in our past and watched the kid do what she does best: entertain. We left there around 1:00am and then Hickey dropped me off at my parents' house.

Sunday, March 30:

I woke up very slowly, again not getting much sleep to start the day. I worked in "the booth" during first service and then ventured out to Walker's for some bible trivia Sunday School. I think that our class would make a good trivia team as we answered 91 questions in the hour we spent focusing on the cards. In retrospect, we would certainly be dubbed the most creative team due to Bill's expected (but somehow unexpected) answers or theories on why those answers were correct. (Insert here - his theory of John the Baptist being an attempted murderer by drowning Jesus, thereby causing Jesus to go straight to the desert to get as far away from water as possible...wow is all I can say). I met my parents, Amy, Jon, and G-mom and Papa for lunch at the Olive Garden. It was delicious as expected. I then went home for a bit before meeting Hickey and Chan at McKay's where we swapped passengers and Hickey left with me. We swung by his house to measure the bike so we could include the frame size on ebay to hopefully help it sell better. We then went to CBCB to film Ben Bolt in his classical guitar concert. It was a good show overall, but some of the abnormally long tuning breaks became annoying as they were simply a waste of film and time. He is truly a gifted musician and I am glad he had the opportunity to share his passion with our church. After the concert, Hickey and I grabbed a quick bite from Taco Bell and ate while watching a couple of episodes of Are You Afraid of the Dark? I hit the road later than planned and arrived safely but tired in Kennesaw aound 12:40am. I decided to omit unpacking and fell into bed and quickly slipped into a coma hoping it would last long enough to prepare me for the upcoming week.

Meditation of the day(s): Ecclesiastes 9:11 "The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded
than the shouts of a ruler of fools."