A beautiful day!

Today I woke up briefly around 7:00am and decided that I needed much more sleep than that so I rolled back over and didn't wake up again until 10:30! I got out of bed feeling very rested, and had some hot tea. I decided to go ahead and work on the reception video to get that out of the way. I worked on it until 1:00 when I decided to take a break and have some lunch. I picked up working on the video again around 3:00 and then got a call from Stacy around 4:30 to figure out when we were going to see a movie.

We decided to go to Target to get some stuff that we both needed and we'd pick up dinner stuff there and fix it back at her house before going to a movie. I called mom and had her give me the details on their trip to the beach. I was glad they had a safe and relaxing trip. I picked Stacy up and we went to the Super Target (I know where it is now!) to buy stuff. We also stopped off next door at Petsmart to pick up food and treats for Cooper. I picked up a buffalo chicken wrap from Target's deli area for my dinner. We went back to Stacy's and ate quickly. We then headed out to Regal Cinemas 16 at Town Center Mall to see the 7:45 showing of Smart People starring Dennis Quaid, Sarah Jessica Parker, Ellen Page, and Thomas Haden Church. It was an excellent movie with a stellar soundtrack. I think all should go see it if you have the opportunity. I would liken it to In Good Company. It isn't necessarily a happy movie, but it makes you think, pay attention, and is beautifully written. We went back to Stacy's and she fixed some Crab Rangoon while I was assembling a storage unit for her closet that she bought at Target today. We ate while watching part of Old School and then I realized how tired I was. I said goodbye and then drove home on a crystal clear night listening to my new Marie Digby album. I went home and decided to go to bed soon so I would wake up in time to visit a church tomorrow morning.

Meditation for the day: Isaiah 43:18 "Forget the former things, do not dwell on the past"

Its Friday, I guess I can go out to eat

I woke up this morning feeling very rested and was actually looking forward to getting to work this morning to get started on all the projects I had on my plate. I arrived after eating some yogurt and a bagel for breakfast. I hit the ground running. First I worked on dividing the retail signs for the Customer Appreciation Week sale into packets for each store. This took a while as each store got certain quantities of each sign (490 signs total!) that were placed in a manila envelope labeled for each store to hold until the week of May 5th. After finishing that daunting task I designed the poster to be printed to slide into the metal racks that will hold our summer learning flyers in each store. The poster will be 22"x28" in full color. I have included a smaller version here for you to see. By the time I had finished that, my group was getting ready to go out to lunch. I had already brought food to eat for lunch, but since it was pay day and I'm easily persuaded to join in some fun I caved and went out with Stacy, Tausha, Blair, Carmen, and Mike to Rafferty's. We arrived shortly after 11:00am and the restaurant was almost completely empty. We asked the hostess to seat us away from everyone else as we knew we would end up being loud, eventually laughing at a story that someone told that wasn't really as funny as we made it out to be. This prediction, of course, came true. I had the chicken finger salad with Honey-Mustard/Bacon-Ranch house dressing. It was delicious and was very filling. When we were leaving everyone told us to have a great day...no one told us to come back though. (hmmm...coincidence?) We returned to work where Mike and I had a brief conversation about theft among our customers, and I found out that the number one category of items stolen in the Georgia stores in Girl Scout supplies. What is this world coming to?! I called Camp Twin Lakes this afternoon to set up our participation in their partners card program. Camp Twin Lakes is a non-profit organization offering year-round recreational, therapeutic and educational programs for children with serious illnesses and life challenges. . The partners card is a card that people purchase that gives them access to take advantage of special discounts at restaurants and retailers November 1st - 9th in exchange for purchasing the $60.00 card. (Similar to the Lifestyles card in Knoxville, but 100% of the money from the cards goes to Camp Twin Lakes) I also worked more on the new catalog cover and checked more items on the website for accuracy.

The work day ended with a group of us making plans to go out Friday night. I was supposed to pick Stacy up around 8:00pm, but I arrived a little late due to traffic. Once she was ready to go we drove not very far away to Bullfrog's Restaurant & Bar. We arrived before everyone else so we grabbed a table before it got too crowded. We sat there for about 30 minutes talking about her Mike issue and issues of my own before we were joined by Blair and her boyfriend Branson. About half an hour later we were also joined by Tausha. She showed up just after the live music for the evening began. We were fortunate enough to be sitting in the middle of the room so we weren't too over blasted by their playing. This evening was a milestone in my life as I can now say that I have seen the band "Mother Truckers" play live in Georgia. They were much better than anticipated based upon their appearances. They played mostly classic Southern rock and they were actually very talented. Their lead guitarist was amazing and the lead singer had the vocal style of AC/DC cloned to perfection. We hung around through several sets of their playing all the while observing the other patrons of the establishment. Sometimes it is just funnier to watch people than to actually pay attention to the main focus of the room. This night was no different. We left Bullfrogs around 12:45am and I dropped Stacy off at her house. Then I sleepily drove home to fall asleep for as long as my body would allow.

Meditation for the day: Luke 15:32 " But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found."

WARNING: Brainstorms can lead to flash floods!

Today began in the normal way. The sun rose, it got light, and I was interrupted from deep sleep by my screeching alarm clock. I got to work a little early and started gathering all of my information on the various advertising, sponsorship, and donation offers we have been hit with over the past week and a half. I had close to 20 items to discuss with Dave and we hit all of them in our 45 minute meeting. I also had some more tasks given to me after that to work on analyzing our ad budget and seeing where the majority of our expenditures occur. I was glad to finally see the end figure for what our advertising/marketing budget is per year so I can get a better idea of what type of things/money we will invest in for the future. I downloaded a new program call MacOSaiX that is designed to take a base picture and then pull pictures from a specified location to create a mosaic tile picture from small tiles of each picture. To better explain it, I used this program to take pictures of our products and apply them to an apple for a possibility for a new cover on our Summer catalog mailing. Let me know what you think (sorry the color is messed up, who knows why). I had the girls pick me up a milkshake from McDonald's when they ventured out for lunch today and I must say that it hit the spot. I worked on various versions of the catalog cover before meeting with Chris today at 1:00pm. We went over everything that needed to be done to prepare for Customer Appreciation Week, May 5th-9th. We also planned out everything that needed to be done to get the gift certificate letters out to our top customers by the end of next week. Printing the signs for Customer Appreciation Week, making posters to promote that week, and working on some other signage kept me occupied for the remainder of the work day. I started the work day not having much to do then I get flooded with things to do. It reminds me of a quote for Gone in 60 Seconds: "It never rains, but it pours" (I really have no idea why I thought of that other than my continued references to water related weather occurrences!?)

I fixed some Velveeta cheese shells for dinner along with some garlic toast and then talked on the phone with Amy for a while. She called to tell me that Jon/Hickey/Charlie's team had won their basketball game and that meant they were headed to the final game next Monday! It is really astonishing to think that they have come this far because last year they didn't make it past the first round of the playoffs! I then went to work on the reception video. I worked on it for a couple of hours, but didn't feel like I made any progress. I will have to spend lots of time on Saturday finishing the video up and then mail it out on Monday morning. I decided to call it quits on editing for the night and relax for an hour before I retired for the evening. I caught the last part of Double Jeopardy on FX and was reminded that it is a fairly suspenseful movie. I turned out the lights seeking more rest in preparation for another Friday night out on the town with my friends here in GA.

Meditation for the day: John 16:24 "Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete."

Hump day!

Today marks the middle of the week. In my mind it is a pretty good day because once its over you know that there are only 2 days left until the weekend. I woke up after having a very good nights sleep, but remembering one strange dream I had. I won't go into too many details because it would take way too long to write, but here's the general idea. I was at a Halloween party with Chris, Tami, and Whitney (even though in the dream we were not together). I was dressed as a fire hydrant, Chris was a dragon, Tami was a knight, and Whitney was a sandwich. (I swear I had nothing to drink to inspire this dream) Whitney and I left the party and went shopping at American Eagle where we saw Hickey and Elizabeth walking around. The rest of the dream included specific prices for shorts they had on sale and me trying on lots of pairs, but finding none that fit just right. I know that God still speaks in dreams, but this one may have just been my subconscious taking a trip to crazy town. (if anyone would care to attempt to interpret this dream, feel free and please let me know...I could use a good laugh!) I arrived at work and was asked by Dave to do some follow questions about our summer learning piece mail-out in early May. I also continued to work on checking the items on the website for descriptions and images. I can now see the pile of pages to go through slowly shrinking and that gives me hope that one day I will run out of item numbers to type in and click on. Just before lunch I ran to the post office to buy some stamps to mail out bills for the month. I heated up some leftover Bertolli's for lunch along with some club crackers. I decided to once again watch a couple of episodes of Family Guy while eating. (Its the little things in life that bring us joy). I finished 5 vendor on the website checking list after lunch which is pretty good. I was able to block out the office noise with my ipod and focus on getting some work done for a change. I also threw together a quick ad to be included in 11Alive's Class Act Teens Program pamphlet for their awards banquet. 11Alive is Atlanta's NBC affiliate, and we support their Class Act teacher awards program and also do some commercials with them at peak times of the year for us. The last hour of work seemed to drag, but it could only drag so much because it was merely an hour that separated us from the freedom of the outside world. (that sounded kind of dramatic but I'm leaving it in to raise the level of suspense in my blog) 5:oopm arrived and I packed up my things and headed out the door for home.

I ate a nice and healthy dinner of a bacon, egg, and cheese toast sandwich with an apple to add more substance. I got some major work done on the video tonight and was able to also find time to create the DVD Insert and labels for both the ceremony and the reception discs. I talked to Hickey on the phone for a bit and we discussed some plans for the next weekend I will be coming into town. (not this weekend though!) I did some random stuff online and then decided to call it an early night as for some reason I was very tired, and I was planning on getting to work the next morning a little early to prepare everything for my meeting with Dave. So I put a movie on and slowly drifted off to sleep, hopefully to have a restful night with no dreams (or at least ones that made sense).

Meditation for the day: Jeremiah 17:9-10 "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? "I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve."

The Internet is the devil!

Today I got out of bed and realized that it must be colder outside this morning than yesterday morning because of the frost on my bedroom window. I was unhappy with this discovery, but it was confirmed by my thermometer as it read 31 degrees at 7:15am this morning. I decided to enjoy some cinnamon roll oatmeal for breakfast to coincide with the cold weather. I thawed out my car, which only took a few minutes, and then drove to work along with thousands of my neighbors. I got to work and it seemed like the time was going to pass quickly today as well. I figured this because I looked at the clock and it was already 10:52am and it felt like it should only be 9:30 or so. I guess time had passed quickly as I was focusing on checking more pictures and descriptions on our website. Today the number of items was much larger to check as I was now not just checking sections, but entire vendors. I decided to splurge and go out to eat for lunch today. Carmen, Blair, Stacy, Tausha, Mike and I went to Willy's Mexicana Grill. It is probably the most "customizable" Mexican establishment I have ever seen. It is set up pretty much identical to a Subway. You place your base order and then you choose what extras go on your meal. I had a chicken quesadilla with chicken, cheese, lettuce, and sour cream. The meal also came with chips and I got a side of their cheese dip (which is awesome!) and some sweet tea. It was delicious and I know I will go back sometime soon. We returned to work, sleepy and unmotivated, but we persevered and got back to the grindstone. I worked very little on checking the website for item accuracy, but I did remake the marketing calendar (for the last time I hope) in Microsoft Excel so everyone can open and view it. I really like the layout of Excel in Office 2008 edition. It looks like Photoshop in that it has all the tools and formatting pallets along the side so you can easily and quickly find what you need instead of searching though drop down menus across the top. I also made some final revisions to the flyer promoting Customer Appreciation Week May 5th - 9th. (be sure to visit your local School Box store to take advantage of great savings!) I grew extremely sleepy towards the end of the day, but through a chat conversation with Stacy I have penned another quote (with a mild integration of a quote from Star Trek Generations) "Time can heal all wounds or prolong our current misery. It's up to us to decide who time will be. Do we see time as a predator, stalking us till we die, or as a companion who will always bring us another day." After typing that, I realized that most of the time we are responsible for the mood we are in. Happiness is a choice (most of the time) and if we wake up each day choosing to feel this way, our days might just be filled with more cheerfulness. Of course, I could be completely wrong in my hypothesis and just crazy, but try it and let me know how it turns out for you.

I left work and headed to Target to pick up a copy of Juno and a few odds and ins. I was psyched to get this movie, but have decided to wait to watch it until Leslie, Stacy, and I get together to watch it together. It will be good to see it again and catch all the subtle deeper meanings that I missed the first time, and to have new memories of watching it with friends. I then went home to change clothes and then headed off to Stacy's for some dinner and hangin' out. She has had a rough couple of days with her "boy troubles" and she didn't want to sit at home alone so I went over. She actually didn't feel like cooking which was fine with me (I don't like people doing things for me all the time) so she fixed some oatmeal for herself and I fixed me a PB&J sandwich. We then watched the movie Accepted, which is one of my favorite comedies that has come out in recent years. It was good to just sit with another human and laugh. (I recommend doing this as often as possible as it is good for the soul) After the movie ended I returned to the apartment and called Hickey to inquire about the result of his mom's surgery. Everything is fine according to Hickey's report and his mom is feeling remarkably well. I worked on the video only briefly tonight as being there for my friends was more important. Besides, I have all weekend to finish and ship the DVD's. I had some French Vanilla hot tea and did some reading on The Red Sea Rules before calling it a night.

Meditation for the day: 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 "But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

Where'd the warm weather go?

I woke up today to see the thermometer reading 40 degrees outside. I want to know where the warm weather disappeared to? I know it didn't follow mom and dad to Myrtle Beach because they are supposed to go right in the middle of a cold front. I ate some cereal and then headed off to work. I got to work and did the few things on my plate for the day by 10:30am. I then asked Stacy if she needed help in doing anything to finish the updates to the website. She gave me a list of item numbers to check. So for the rest of the day I typed in the item numbers on our website and checked to make sure that these items all had images and descriptions associated with them. This took longer than I expected, but I got halfway through the pages she gave me to work on. I also made some minor adjustments to the ad for Kids Enabled magazine and sent that off for them to publish in their magazine. I also spoke with Chris about when to send out the gift certificate letters since we will probably get the printed envelopes back from Printing Impressions at the end of this week. The work day passed really fast which was nice for it being a Monday. I left work and went home to change into some walking clothes.

I was supposed to arrive at Stacy's around 6:00pm to go walking and eat some dinner, but something came up and she needed to be with her friend Stephanie who lives in Smyrna. Since I was on my own for dinner I decided to fix one of the new Bertolli's dinners I purchased last week. It was Italian Sausage and Rigatoni in a red sauce. It was delicious and went well with the garlic bread I decided to make as my side item. I spent a good amount of time working on the reception video and have lined up the two video tracks for the first 20 minutes of footage. My goal will be 20 more minutes of footage edited tomorrow with some last minute effects on Wednesday so I can mail them out on Thursday. I also spent a good amount of time talking to Stacy about her situation. I got off the phone with her thankfully knowing that she would be alright. I hate it when my friends are going through tough times. It makes me feel like I should do something, even if I don't know what it is and that sometimes isn't the best solution. Sometimes it is just best to listen. I did a few more things online and then decided to watch the movie Disturbia, from the beginning this time. It was excellent. I am slightly biased because the film stars Shia LaBeouf, who has starred in many movies that I enjoy. It was very suspenseful at points and also very humorous too. I decided to go to bed as the time approached 11:30pm and I knew that I would need rest to get through the remainder of the week.

Meditation of the day: Psalm 139:4 " Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD."

Isn't it comforting to know that God knows us so intimately that he knows the hairs on our head and what we will say before we say it? It brings me unmatchable joy to know that the one who created the heavens and the earth wants to know me that personally. It makes me feel loved to know that He cares for me no matter what I have done.

The Risen Christ

This morning at CBCB the adult choir performed "The Risen Christ", a collection of narration, soloists, and music to remind us that while other religions worship a founder that has died ad is remembered, Christians worship and before hitting the road back to serve the God who died and rose to live again. It was moving text and beautifully composed music that brought tears to the eyes. The video used to enhance the songs also burned images into my mind of how human Jesus was. After enjoying this worship experience I was able to talk to many of my friends from CBCBKennesaw.

The drive home was very peaceful. I found a little bit of rain on my way out of Knoxville and Sweetwater area, but found nothing but blue skies and sunlight the rest of the way home. I arrived, very hungry, and unloaded my car. I fixed s quick bite to eat for lunch and watched Employee of the Month, one of the movies I picked up this weekend. I did some laundry and cleaned for a while before decided to update my blog from the weekend's activities. I then worked very briefly on answering and sorting through emails that had accumulated in my inbox over the past 3 days. I almost thought about working on the video editing, but realized I needed some "me" time and decided to take it. I wrote some thoughts down and worked on writing my new instrumental piece of music. It came together really fast at first. Now that I have to melody line down, I need to add in the supporting voices, bass line, and harmonies. Today was a good day, and I enter the new week with optimism and hope for some excitement to have something more to write about.

Meditation of the day: (lyrics to the song "The Risen Christ")
"O breath of God, come fill this place;
Revive our hearts to know Your grace;
And from our slumber make us rise
That we may know the Risen Christ.

O word of God, so clear and true,
Renew our minds to trust in You;
And give to us the bread of life
That we may know the Risen Christ.

O love of God, so unrestrained,
Refresh our souls in Jesus' name.
Let us reflect Your sacrifice
That we may know the Risen Christ.

May God the Father, God the Son,
And God the Spirit make us one.
In holiness let us unite
That we may know the Risen Christ."
~ Keith Getty