It feels like Fall in Tennessee!

I drove up to Knoxville this morning and found the weather to be beautiful and the traffic to be non-existent. It was probably the fastest trip up yet (seemed like it that is). I arrived in town, got allergy shots, and then bought gas as I was running on fumes by this point. The weather was a little brisk with strong winds and felt like the weather should in early October. I wished we had planned on hiking/camping this weekend instead as the weather was perfect for that. I dropped my car off at my parent's house and rode with mom out to Turkey Creek to accompany her on a couple of errands. I had her drop me off at Hickey's house once he was though with CCR training.

We commenced preparing the bike to be shipped to the buyer from ebay and it proved more difficult than originally expected. We had picked up a box from a bicycle shop in West Knoxville and all we had to do was make it fit in the box. Simple right? No! We had to take off both tires (after removing the front and rear brakes), lower the seat, and remove the pedals. We were able to do all but remove the pedals and we couldn't figure out how to get them apart. We finally threw up the white flag and took it to West Bicycle Shop in Farragut to seek advice. The gentleman we spoke with told us to bring the bike in and they could help. He removed the pedal within a few minutes...and then charged us $5 for his troubles. Looking back it really wasn't a big deal, but I would have appreciated him telling us up front that he would help for a price. We took the fully dismantled bike and pieces and packed it up in a box to take to a UPS store to ship out to West Palm Beach, FL. We stopped off at the Goodwill store near FHS to see if we could find any random t-shirts for summer time. No such luck so on to UPS we went. When we arrived the employee behind the counter asked where we got the box from because they charge a minimum of $35 for a bicycle box from them. We shipped out the bike for a reasonable amount of money and then grabbed some lunch at Sam and Andy's. This was, as I'm ashamed to say, my first time eating at the Farragut location and it's reputation was not let down as I had a Vol Burger and fries with some of the best sweet tea I've ever tasted. We drove to Movies for sale where I purchased several movies for the employee discount since it was Hickey's last day working there.

Mom picked me up and took me back to my car. I then drove out to Amy and Jon's house to play some Super Metroid on the Wii before we met for my mom's birthday dinner. It reminded me a summers spent with Amy and Michael back when we were in middle/high school and life made sense (most of the time). We met at McAlister's for dinner and then returned to Amy and Jon's for presents and dessert. After the festivities I played a bit more on the game and then made another movie run for dad and Jon at Movies for Sale before Hickey closed up for the night. I bought the DVDs and then after talking briefly with Hickey and company, headed home to grab some sleep.

Meditation for the day: James 1:2 "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds"

Thank God its Friday night (and I just got paid)

(Beginning note: The title of today's blog is actually the title of a song by the hugely successful boy band N'Sync and since I am running out of creative titles this is what I chose)

Today I woke up fairly happy in anticipation of going out to eat tonight at La Parilla at Marietta Square and then moving down to Hemmingway's Bar & Grill to see 7 Sharp Nine (a local band). That mood quickly faded as I rounded the corner of Barret Pkwy and Cobb Place Blvd on my way to work. What I saw: the Exxon station sign, announcing that regular unleaded gasoline was now $3.39 per gallon. That gloom disappeared almost as quickly as I got to work to find out that today was going to be a silly day. Stacy, who was off yesterday, started playing the new children's CD's for all of us to hear and we soon had a sing along going to the ABC's Song. (This is also the point where Tausha and Stacy stood on their chairs singing, and we discovered that I am about 3 inches shorter than them while they are standing in their chairs.) The creative juices started flowing eventually and I came up with more ideas for the Summer Catalog cover (seen here). I ran a few quick errands to the bank and Target before devouring my lunch at my desk. I was unusually hungry today, so I am glad I brought a fairly large lunch of the leftovers from the night before. The rest of the work day was equally as fun, an unfortunately not very productive. I did witness the best prank I have seen in a while. You can see evidence of the picture here. Several of the girls grabbed a Kennesaw Singles sign that was posted in the ground like a real estate for sale sign on the corner near our building. The sign read, "Single? kennesawsingles.org" and then they made it say "Single! skarafel@gmail.com" They posted Stacy's email address over the original website name and then stuck it at her desk for her to see when she got out of her meeting. She about died, but was glad that they didn't do something more crazy like post it back on the corner!

I went home to pack for my brief visit to Knoxville this weekend and then got ready for a night out on the town. I picked Stacy up around 7:00pm and we met Leslie and Brian at La Parilla Mexican Restaurant for dinner. It was extremely crowded and after we ate I realized it was because the food was so good. We waited just a few minutes for the rainstorm that unleashed itself during dinner to let up and then we piled into the cars to travel to Marietta Square. Brian and I dropped the ladies off at the door to Hemmingway's as it had once again begun to rain. I found a parking place just around the corner, paid my $3 cover charge, and found my friends at our table. 7 Sharp 9 was already playing and from their cover version of "Rockstar" by Nickleback I could tell that they were pretty good. The sound quality was actually pretty nice for a medium sized bar and there weren't very many people smoking so that was a bonus as well. We listened to them do some more covers and several of their original songs. I will probably now be forced to purchase their album to enjoy their music after tonight. We hung around there laughing and listening until 11:00 when Stacy's friend Stephanie (no not the one from Smyrna or Miami, but this Stephanie is from Charlotte, NC) arrived and then she headed out with her. About 2 minutes later I departed and I think that Leslie and Brian were not far behind me. I found my way home without getting lost (except for missing one turn, but it was easily corrected) and then fell down and went to sleep almost immediately. I was sure to need rest for my drive to K-town in the morning.

Meditation of the day: Psalm 145:7 " They will celebrate your abundant goodness and joyfully sing of your righteousness."

There's a (brain) storm coming!

Today, I spent the majority of my time in an attempt to get the creative juices oozing for the good of man kind (or at least the good of The School Box). I was trying to come up with ideas for our new summer catalog cover. We really need to get away from the boring picture of a kid sitting in a classroom getting advice from his/her teacher. Those pictures are nice, but ultimately they all look the same in then end and the nice colorful glossy covers lose their ability to catch people's attention and entice them to look and buy. It is my mission to prevent that from happening. Of course it will take some masterful presentation of ideas to persuade the powers that be to venture out in a new direction. I am confident we will be able to reach a cover that is good for everyone. I also spent some time today analyzing our website and what areas we might be able to improve upon. We really do have a very aesthetically pleasing site, and the only thing I have found lacking is the extra stuff that people sometimes look at before placing an order with our company (such as: partners, community involvement, and teacher resource pages). I decided to splurge for lunch today and I had Tausha pick me up some food from McDonald's when she and Blair made a food run. I hadn't eaten out all week so I figured I could afford it. I finally heard back from our UK (United Kingdom) friend today and we negotiated the purchase of the de-duping program. I downloaded it and then installed it. This proved more difficult than anticipated due to the fact that it is a windows based program. I had to have Mike show me how to run the Windows virtual machine on my Mac to install and run the program. Once that lesson had been learned I ran the list through the program and we came out with 2390 unique names/addresses to send out the flyer! The rest of the work day was a blur filled with occasional jokes and some staring into space trying to be creative. I did find out that Aimee, one of our regional managers, is terrified of flying. There will be a group of regional managers and vice-presidents that will be flying out tomorrow morning to go up North for a secret mission, so I made Aimee a paper airplane and reminded her that the plane she will be on is much more technologically advanced and is made out of much sturdier materials. (This did not do much to ease her fears, but I tried my best). I gave up and left a little early today since I seemed to be only watching the seconds tick away on the clock instead of accomplishing something of value.

I spent some time tonight getting some real work done on the wedding reception video. I mixed the intro video together and placed it on the main menu and applied music to the background. I also laid down the first track of video footage and split it into clips to make the editing go more quickly. I also took care of some financial duties and then decided to cook some dinner. I grilled some chicken marinated in a sesame glaze and then diced it up and mixed it in with some penne pasta with garlic basil sauce. It was good and now I have enough left to take to work tomorrow for lunch. I watched the movie Grandma's Boy tonight and while it is wrong on so many levels, it ultimately made me laugh so it was time well spent. I got a head start on packing for my day long trip to Knoxville this weekend. I am really looking forward to going out tomorrow night. Leslie, Brian, Stacy, and I will be going to eat at a Mexican restaurant tomorrow night before ending up at Hemingway's from some fun and live music! Well, I must turn in for the evening now, but I will see you all on Saturday.

Meditation for the day: James 4:2 "You do not have because you do not ask God"

Insurance companies speak in a made-up language

Today at work I did a lot before lunch. I obliged Stacy's request to read her letter to the guy she really like that lives in Tallahassee. They have been talking for a few months and then last night he finally said that he didn't want to try the long distance thing so Stacy finished the letter she had been writing him for the past two weeks. It was filled with amazing illustrations of the array of human emotions. She is very talented at writing and I hope that the situation resolves in a way that no one remains hurt. I also made some revisions on 3 of the retail signs that I had produced for the managers to use in their stores. I printed the revised return/exchange policy to be posted at the registers also. I ate my lunch while again watching a couple of episodes of Family Guy online. After lunch we had a meeting with a representative of Kaiser Permanente Insurance Provider to explain our new insurance coverage. The meeting went as most meetings about changes go. People were confused, and some were ultimately upset by the fact that their current doctor was not included under the level of coverage that The School Box will pay for 100%. I am just thankful that the School Box pays any part of my health insurance. I am thrilled that Dave is willing to take care of his employees by paying the entire premium of the basic level for each full-time employee. I understand that change is difficult and sometimes a pain. In my situation since I am now a resident of Georgia, if I wish to continue getting injections I must find a doctor down here who will refer me to an allergy specialist to continue treatment. That does not make me happy, but at least I have the ability to do so and it will certainly cut down on my gas bill. There is a quote I would like to share that I recall from Stacy's letter:"Life is too short to wake up in the morning with regrets. So love the people who treat you right, forget about the ones who don't and believe that everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance, take it. If it changes your life, let it. Nobody said that it would be easy, they just promised it would be worth it."

The rest of the work day went on as usual with some small projects that occupied the remainder of my time. I was about to begin working on de-duping the mailing list to pair it down to only the addresses that we need to send to. (for info: de-dupe means to eliminate duplicate entries of the same information ie. the same account entered twice - once for school and once for the board of education) There is a program that Mike and I looked at from a website: www.dedupeit.com Their software is designed to do specifically what we need to complete this process in an expedient fashion. We contacted the owner and when we hear back from him we will try and negotiate a slightly lower price before we purchase this software for us to use. The rest of the work day was actually frustrating as the copier was down for about an hour and a half for the maintenance crew to finally replace the damaged components that they were supposed to replace 3 weeks ago. Then after they left around 4:00 we were printing some documents for the rest of the company regarding the insurance changes and the copier jammed! Mike and I contemplated throwing it onto I-75 because it would be of more use as a traffic cone than as a piece of office equipment. We finally were able to locate the source of the jam and once the obstruction was removed, it worked fine once again.

I went home and finally got Avid to complete the video clip effects application without crashing so I was able to burn Leslie's DVD and print it for her to give to Brian on Friday night. I took a short nap as I haven't yet had an opportunity to regain the lost sleep from the weekend. It was refreshing and much needed. I had the TV running in the background as I did various things online and completed my birthday present for mom. (if you're reading this, here's what I'm getting you.....A GIFT!) I decided to turn in early as I will need to have energy saved up to go out Friday night with Stacy, Leslie, and Brian. Sleep well!

Meditation for the day: Excerpt from the song "He Will Carry Me" from the musical production How Great is Our God, "Even though I'm walking through the valley of the shadow, I will hold fast to the hand of Him whose love will comfort me. And when all hope is gone and I've been wounded in the battle, He is all the strength that I will ever need. He will carry me."

I'm going blind!

Today I woke up and actually got up pretty much right away. This is clearly the better way to go as I had time to eat some breakfast and not feel rushed to get ready for work. I drove to work through unusually heavy traffic that I attribute to the fact that I was leaving on time today instead of late. I arrived at work not really looking forward to the long and monotonous task of deleting the names contained in the new mailing list that were also found in the first mailing list export. I worked on that steadily until 12:35 when I decided I had to stop and eat some lunch. I had already worked through about 18 pages of these account lists which meant that I was slightly over halfway done. I watched some episodes of Family Guy online at www.familyguynow.com to entertain myself while I ate some Campbell's Healthy Request Grilled Chicken & Sausage Gumbo soup. It was delicious and actually filled me up along with some baked Doritos. I begrudgingly began to work again on the mailing list and was able to finish the first trimming down around 3:45. This involved the eliminating of around 2600 duplicated names, which still left me with almost 3,000 new addresses to send the flyer out to! This will make Dave happy as we still have somewhere around 25,000 flyers we need to distribute. I also revised the return policy to clear up some confusion that a customer expressed concerning debit vs. credit card return policies. After I did that, I kind of went on auto pilot for the remaining 30 minutes until that glorious time of 5:00pm rolled around.

I went home and began to work on the finishing touches of Leslie's picture disc for Brian. I found mainly frustration as when I tried to edit a specific clip and my computer crashed...six times in a row! I finally decided for the safety of my computer that I needed to take a break. I finished a load of laundry and the fixed some pasta with tomato basil sauce for dinner. It was good, but not very filling as I am a terrible judge of how much of something to fix to make a meal. I watched the NCAA Women's Championship game. It was supposed to be a good one as UT vs. Stanford was supposed to pit the two Candices against each other. (Candice Wiggins from Stanford and Candice Parker from Tennessee) The game was very good. They started out pretty evenly in the first eight minutes of the game, then UT began using almost all of its players to score from anywhere on the floor. The first half showed the collapse of Stanford's defense and this trend only continued in the remainder of the game. The Lady Vols won the game by a score of 64-48 giving Coach Pat Summit her 8th National Title. The game was refreshing to watch, but I wish there was someone I could have watched it with. Its hard to be excited and congratulate people if you're the only one there. I did some reading before going to bed and had a nice conversation with Hickey as he called somewhat irritated at his "Crystal Method" problem. I gave what advice I could, seeing as how my life is in the same place as his right now...in pieces. I will hopefully get to spend some time with him Saturday evening after birthday festivities.

Meditation of the day: Job 42:10 "After Job had prayed for his friends, the LORD made him prosperous again and gave him twice as much as he had before."

This verse made me contemplate the importance of praying for people you care about, especially your friends that are there for you when you need them most. I hope we all remember to pray and thank God for our friends each day. They are truly a blessing in our lives.

Ashes & Wine

Today I woke up late and still felt drained from my exposure to the sun and rain this past weekend. I plan to take it slow this week as I began to try and get back into a steady workout routine. I got to work and it was eerily quiet all day long. Dave and Chris are on vacation, but it seems like everyone else is pretending to be mimes as the main sound heard yesterday was the punching of keys on the keyboard. I worked on a new ad for the Kids Enabled magazine, a publication that focuses on helping parents of children with learning differences. I have placed it here, let me know what you think! I also worked on a few odds and ins concerning a small flyer for Customer Appreciation May 5th - 9th. I finally got together with Mike and we re-exported the accounts list so I could see if there was a problem with the previous export for the mail-out of the Early Childhood flyer. There was indeed a large problem as the list that we originally sent for the mailing contained 2300 names and this new export contained 5600 names! My day tomorrow will certainly be consumed with comparing the 2 versions of the mailing list and pulling out the names that were omitted the last time around. I worked briefly on some brainstorming ideas for how to track the results of a mailing list building contest between the retail stores (since this project is now apparently my responsibility...no one told me!).

I went home and was looking forward to going out to eat, drink, and watch the NCAA championship game, but due to certain occurrences with one of our friends, we did not go out. I instead stayed home and worked on Leslie's slideshow project for a couple of hours. I also watched bits and pieces of the game while also watching some episodes of Family Guy. I grew very tired, but for some reason didn't have the sense to go to sleep...hey, just cause I have a college degree doesn't mean I'm intelligent at all times. I put on National Treasure, a great movie for either watching or sleeping to, and slowly drifted off to sleep.

Meditation for the day: Go to http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/afinefrenzy/ashesandwine.html to view the lyrics for a song called Ashes & Wine by A Fine Frenzy, one of my favorite bands. I was listening to my ipod at work today and really listened to the lyrics of this song for the first time. I kind of wished I had heard them about 3 weeks ago, but it is still a good song and still captures the way I feel every now and then.

It feels good to be dry

I awoke after the best night of sleep I've ever had camping (of course since we returned and didn't sleep outside during the flood of '08 it helped). Jubin dropped me off at my parents house where I promptly got a hot shower and then put on 100% dry clothes. That was a really nice feeling. I waited until Hickey was going to be out of church to give him a call to determine the rest of the day's plans. While waiting I had the opportunity to watch the majority of Disturbia on HBO. This film seemed like it would be good from what I could remember from the previews, and I was not disappointed. I will most certainly be purchasing this on DVD soon.

I called Hickey and we decided to meet at Lenny's sub shop and then go to the UT vs. Florida baseball game. I met Hickey and Chris there and we piled into my car and headed to the game. We found that parking was difficult to find due to the unusually large crowd that had show up for the game. We ended up parking at Thompson Bowling Arena and then embarking on a short hike to reach the baseball stadium. The game was good and the weather was great! The sun was nice and its warmth was appreciated....at first. We soon found ourselves rolling up our sleeves and longing for a breeze to blow some cool air our way as the temperature reached high 70s and there was no shade in sight. We watched the game until the top of the 7th inning and left with UT trailing 7-2. Some of you might think we were being fair weather fans, but what you must realize is that we do not really care about the outcome of the game at all. We simply go to enjoy each other's company, a nice cold Coke, and some sunlight.

We left the game and I dropped Hickey and Chris off at Hickey's truck which was still at Lenny's (thankfully). We realized once we left that although we had enjoyed the beautiful day, we would certainly be feeling its effects for the next few days as we again forgot to guard ourselves with sunscreen and looked quite red on our arms and legs by the time we saw shade. I then filled up on gas and hit the road back to Kennesaw still enjoying the wonderful weather.

The traffic was light on my drive home and I arrived shortly after 7:00pm. I unpacked a few things and then grabbed some dinner. I worked a bit on a project for Leslie for her to give to her boyfriend Brian this upcoming weekend. I then watched the Lady Vols play LSU for a right to go to the national championship game. The game was very slow and hard to watch as neither team could find a rythym to shooting the ball and there was no real dominant team until halfway throught the first half when Candice Parker finally broke out on a shooting streak to give the Lady Vols a good lead. The second half was much closer and only through a put back by Alexis Hornbuckle did Tennessee manage to win the game by 1 point as the last shot went in with only 0.7 seconds left on the game clock. They will meet Stanford in the championship game on Tuesday and that could potentially lead to the Lady Vols' 8th National Title! I must now go to bed to continue recovery from the rain and the sunshine (mother nature and I hung out a lot this weekend....and she's ok with me).

Meditation for the day: Psalm 113:3 "From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets, the name of the LORD is to be praised."