From the Desk 7/18/2008

This morning I "woke up" at 6:30 when my alarm went off. I put woke up in quotes because it really didn't seem like I was asleep at all. I drug myself out of bed and after a shower I felt much better and actually didn't feel all that tired. I put on some shorts and a t-shirt to go work in the overflow warehouse again and drove in to work. As I passed the gas station on the corner I noticed that the price of gas had dropped significantly since the day I bought some. ($4.12 is what I paid on Tuesday and it was now $3.99) I picked up some breakfast, but decided to pass on a visit to Starbucks, thinking that the shot of caffeine would only lead to a greater crash of fatigue later. I checked a few things and answered some emails before Corey, Stacy, and I headed out. Our mission today was to check in 34 pallets of Pacon paper products. We got into a good rhythm and worked steadily until 10:45. We had checked in about 18 pallets when we stopped for a lunch break. We went back to the store and picked up Carmen and Tausha for lunch. We went to Willy's for some Mexican food.

After lunch we met back up with Corey and returned to our project for the day. I began to feel the effects of last night's lack of sleep around 12:30 once we returned to checking in the shipment. One of the drivers came to pick up 4 of the pallets we had checked in and he decided to go ahead and get 5. That was probably not the best idea since the truck was off balance then. (The photo doesn't do the way the truck was leaning justice, but its all I got) We finished the Pacon shipment around 1:00 and decided to go ahead and check in one more shipment of furniture that was small so we knew it wouldn't take long. We wrapped up everything in the overflow warehouse and made a few stops I needed to make on the way back to the store. We stopped off at ATS graphics to pick up the left over shirts from Summer Training that we had printed. We also stopped off at Printing Impressions to pick up the inserts to take to the mail house for the catalog mailing, but when we got there Tony told me that they had been delivered earlier in the day. I decided that they could remain in our warehouse until Monday and then one of the drivers could deliver them since we are about a week ahead of schedule on that project. I returned and answered the 5 messages I had received while away from my desk. I printed a few things for some of the stores and made some name badges that people notified me that we were missing. It reached 2:30 and I just hit a wall. I was really having trouble keeping my eyes open and Mike told me I could go home early. It was Vickie's plan for Stacy, Corey, and I to go home early on Friday anyway since we had been doing double duty all week. I went out on the floor and said hello to Christina and told he to call me when she got out of work. Then I drove home and crashed on the couch, falling asleep very quickly.

I woke up about 2 hours later feeling better and slightly more rested. Christina called and she was going to come over around 7:00 so she could rest a little bit after work. She arrived and we watched That 70's Show marathon on ABC Family that was covering the end of season 6 and the beginning of season 7. I dozed off during the third episode, but woke up after about 45 minutes. We then ate some popcorn while watching the season premier of "Psych" on USA. It was a good episode that kept you laughing, which kept us awake. We watched one episode of "House" after that and then I walked Christina to her car and said goodnight.

Meditation for the day: 1 John 1:7 “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.”

From the Desk 7/17/2008

This morning I woke up feeling the effects of the work from yesterday. I got ready for work, today wearing jeans and a School Box polo shirt as I would probably be working in view of customers and needed to look slightly more professional than shorts and a t-shirt. I got to work and managed to work with Aimee and Vickie on several signs they had proofed for me, print them out, and call back several people before we went to work in the warehouse. We checked in 5 pallets before lunch time and then at 11:00 Tauhsa, Carmen, Stacy and I went to KFC for some food. It wasn't particularly busy when we arrived, but it seemed to take a long time to get our food anyway. I had ordered the 10 piece boneless wings in the sweet & spicy sauce. What I got was the meal in teryaki sauce. I was fine with that and it probably was better to eat that sauce than the spicy one as we were working in the warehouse and it was quite warm even with air conditioning. We ate and relaxed for a while before returning to work.

After work we checked in and put away an additional 4 pallets of stock. We decided to call it quits on the warehouse work for the day as we all had other job responsibilities that we needed to take care of before it piled up too much. I finished printing some signs and also verified with our mail house that the next batch of catalogs for mailing had arrived. I emailed our mailing list to them so they could get a head start on poly-bagging the catalogs into bags of 2. I also called Printing Impressions to verify that they had received the file I sent yesterday to print the inserts for the catalog poly-bags so we had something to print the addresses on. After these few odds and ins I headed home to prepare for my guests' arrival.

Tausha and Stacy came over after work to play some Wii Sports and unwind from a stressful, busy week. They stopped off at Wendy's and picked up some food for dinner and then we began to play some games. After a couple of songs on Guitar Hero III we switched to playing Wii Sports. They really enjoyed tennis, but the main game we played was bowling. This was Stacy's first time playing anything using the Wii remote so it took her some time to get used to how it senses your movements. It didn't take too long though as Tausha destroyed both of us in the first game, but Stacy won the second game. I won the third game by only 3 points as Stacy was close to winning that one as well. Then it came time for boxing. I can't really describe how funny it was to watch Tausha and Stacy box each other, but I will say that if you were watching and took a sip of a drink it would be sprayed across the room in a matter of seconds from laughter. After that we played baseball and then they left. I had gotten a call from Christina during one of the bowling games to see if we wanted to join Leslie and Bill for the midnight showing of "The Dark Knight" the newest Batman movie. I had told her sure and I would just be tired the next day. She came over after she got off work and we ended up watching Batman Begins which was playing on FX and ended right before we needed to leave to go the the theater.

We arrived at the AMC Barrett Theater at 11:20 and found Leslie and Bill who had picked up tickets for us earlier that day. We found 4 seats together in the theater and then the anticipation began to build for the movie. The movie began at 12:15am on what was technically Friday morning. It was amazing. I won't put any details here as I don't want to spoil it for anyone who might go see it, but I will say that this is not a superhero movie that I would take children to see. It is very dark and Heath Ledger's portrayal of the villain The Joker is spine-tingling. The movie was longer than I had expected, but I had not noticed what time it was as I couldn't tear my eyes away from the screen during th film. The parking lot was very congested trying to leave as the movie was showing on 12 screens (4 began at 12:00, 4 at 12:15 and 4 at 12:30) and everyone was trying to leave pretty much at the same time. We got back to the apartment around 3:45am and I made sure Christina was awake enough to drive home. I fell asleep thinking about how good the movie was and how tired I would be when my alarm would go off about 2 and a half hours from then when I had to get up for work.

Meditation for the day: Psalm 119:101-102 " have kept my feet from every evil path so that I might obey your word. I have not departed from your laws, for you yourself have taught me."

From the Desk 7/16/2008

This morning I wore shorts and a t-shirt to work as we would be working the majority of the day in the overflow warehouse which has no air conditioning. It was nice to help out and to do something different for a day or two so the heat wasn't really an issue that I was worried about. I answered a few emails before Corey, Stacy and I piled into my car and drove down the road a mile or so to the rented warehouse site. We walked in and were surprised at the size of the facility. It had very high ceilings and 8 loading docks. We took advantage of 4 of the loading docks by opening the doors to provide both air circulation and light to help us see since we couldn't find where to turn on the lights. Our mission for the day was a fairly aggressive one. We were to check-in and split-out two very large shipments from two of our vendors. We developed our system for keeping things organized and got to work around 9:15. It was a chore that we knew would take a while so we paced ourselves to last for the majority of the day in this warehouse. We worked until 11:00 and then went to Jersey Mike's for some lunch. We ate and it instantly became a new favorite place for me to eat as the Italian sub I ate was delicious and they were playing the entire "Crash" CD by Dave Matthews Band. After cooling off and feeling full we returned to the main store to procure more box labels for each store's shipments.

We returned to the other warehouse to finish up these two shipments. After we finished them we began stacking everything on pallets so they could be transferred to our main warehouse and then shipped out to the stores for stock. That process took a while and it was fairly tiring as by this point we had been walking back and forth non-stop for about 4 hours. We finished up everything we could do with the shipments we were working on around 3:00. We counted and had checked in, labeled, and stacked 26 pallets of product for the stores! Needless to say we were tired, but that didn't mean that our day was over yet. We returned to the main warehouse and proceeded to check-in and put away an additional 6 pallets of product. Once I returned to my desk I answered several emails and listened to several voice messages. The original plan had been to go hike at a new trail (Pine Log Creek) after work today, but we were all too tired to even think about doing that.

I went home and promptly took a shower to remove the sweat and mostly dirt/dust from handling the pallets all day. I ate a quick bite and started a load of laundry. Christina called around 7:45 and told me she was out of class. She invited me over to watch a movie and since we are both indecisive I brought about 6 to choose from. We settled on watching "The Exorcism of Emily Rose". I hadn't seen this movie in a long time, and had forgotten how good it was. It is a "horror" movie, but the way that this movie impacts me is in the knowledge that the supernatural things that take place in the movie (i.e. demon possession) really happen and that makes it more terrifying. Christina had never seen it and she enjoyed the movie. She also cited the scary reality that things like this really do happen. After the movie we just sat on the couch talking about our families (mostly extended families, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.). It was really nice to get to know more about her family and I enjoyed telling her about mine (don't worry, it was all good things) I left after a while and headed home to go to sleep. I knew I would need rest because we were going to work in the main warehouse tomorrow checking in more shipments.

Meditation for the day: Proverbs 14:23 " All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty."

From the Desk 7/15/2008

Today I managed to work on a few last minute things before delving into the world of pricing. Around 9:45 we converted the workshop room to a mobile receiving/pricing station. We brought boxes from the warehouse, by vendor, to the workshop room to price products and then divide them out to the stores based on the min/max levels set by purchasing for each item. It doesn't sound like much, but we managed to sort through 2 pallets of products and price/sort them before 11:00 when we stopped for lunch. It was nice to have a different view instead of staring at my desk and it took me back to the memories of working in the warehouse in the Knoxville store when I first started working for P&S.

After my lunch in the break room with Tausha, Carmen, Blair, and Stacy, the work resumed. Stacy and I checked in another 3 shipments of merchandise and with Tausha's help we boxed up everything to go to the stores in their shipments later this week. I worked on splitting out orders and pricing until around 4:00 and then had to cram all of the usual marketing activities I'd do in a day into the remaining hour I had left at work. I prioritized the things that had to happen that day and then shuffled everything else over to a list for tomorrow afternoon. We planned to work in the other warehouse (the overflow warehouse that we rent in the Back-to-School season to house our overstock merchandise) tomorrow so no doubt I will be tired after another day's good, hard work.

I left work with Christina and we went hiking at Pine Mountain in Cartersville for a change in hiking scenery. Everyone else backed out citing that they were too tired or had too much to do so it ended up just being the two of us (which was fine with me). We hiked up to the overlook and rested for several minutes just taking in the view and the warm sunlight. (I apologize for my lacking skills in taking pictures of myself or other people near me) It was peaceful and relaxing just sitting there quietly. We trekked the rest of the way down the mountain and returned to the car to head home. We stopped of at a Kangaroo food mart to buy some Powerade to quench our thirst from the hike. We drove back to the Box and I said goodbye to Christina for the night. I returned to the apartment and resumed working on wedding videos. I worked on that for about an hour and then took a break. My break turned into an hour long nap from 9:00-10:00 at which point I decided to go to bed early. I fell asleep very rapidly as I was tired from the hike and from the change of pace at work. I have a feeling this will be how I feel most of the week.

Meditation for the day: Isaiah 41:10 “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”

From the Desk 7/14/2008

Today I spent a large majority of the day tying up loose ends with pending projects, signs, and donations to prepare for the next 3 weeks of Back-to-School madness. I did field an unusually high amount of phone calls today from every media outlet wanting us to advertise with them in a BTS special segment. I also received an email or phone call from what seemed like every educational event that was seeking sponsorships and donations in the entire state of Georgia and even a few in Tennessee. Unfortunately, we have already committed all available resources and products that we can during this time so I had to send a standard email, thanking them for their interest and thoughts of The School Box, but apologizing that we simply cannot contribute to every request we receive. I took a break for lunch and then returned to the tedious but necessary tasks.

I also made a few signs for the retail stores to use to promote discounted items that would be an additional 15% off until August 31st as well as finalizing a poster to promote the details of the Tax Holiday. I spent the last part of the day straightening up my desk as I wanted there to be room for things that might appear as I'm away from my desk over the next few days to help out the warehouse with receiving shipments. I left work a bit early to go to the post office and mail out DVDs from a wedding. I then ran by my apartment quickly and changed clothes to be ready to go hiking with Stacy. I met her back at the Box and we left for Burnt Hickory Rd. loop.

We hiked and it was a good hike as usual, but I think that I might suggest we go elsewhere next time as this hike is growing a little old (done too many times, too often). I got home around 7:15 and ate a quick bite. Christina called me just before I hoped in the shower and told me she got out of class early. I told her to head on over and we would go grab some food when she got here. We went to Dairy Queen to try their Thin Mint Blizzard which features actual thin mint Girl Scout cookies chopped up and mixed in. Christina also had a chicken sandwich, which is when I realized that I don't think I've ever eaten real food at a Dairy Queen. We enjoyed the Blizzards and will definitely go back before the end of July when these special frozen treats are no longer available. After that we went to my apartment and watched several episodes of Boy Meets World. We were able to finish watching season 5 (my favorite season) which ends with Cory and Topanga officially split after an incident on the senior ski trip with a girl that worked at the lodge, Lauren (played by Linda Cardellini). I walked Christina to her car, said goodnight, and then went inside to go to sleep. I knew rest would be important as I was supposed to begin helping out with pricing/receiving tomorrow.

Meditation for the day: Romans 1:16 “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.”

From the Desk 7/13/2008

This morning I woke up at 7:00 and couldn't get back to sleep. I was very tired and was hoping to sleep in until 8:45, but apparently that was not the plan for me this morning. I laid in bed for about 10 minutes and finally gave up trying to go back to sleep. I got up and printed the labels on some of the DVDs that I had already made copies of for the next wedding I was working on. I ate some breakfast and got ready for church. I left the apartment to go pick up Christina and along the way guess what happened.....it rained! (Shocking, I know) The rain continued to follow me until we arrived at His Hands. I dropped Christina off at the door so she wouldn't get wet, and then I parked the car and joined her inside. The service was good and I'm starting to learn the songs as there were some repeated this week that I had heard before. We observed the Lord's Supper and then sang a song about unity in the body of Christ. The normal pastor was out of town, but the man that filled in for him was equally as capable of preaching. We talked about the way to fix things that seem wrong in our lives, and how if we fix one thing that it sometimes can fix something else we never knew was wrong. We also talked about how when things are going wrong in our lives that we need to know that it is Satan attacking us. The main focus was to do three things to try and fix areas in your life that are causing stress and frustration. (1) Pray everyday and spend time talk with God (2) Read the Bible everyday and study its wisdom (3) Worship God in someway everyday. It was good, but the dark lights and my lack of sleep began to make it difficult to focus towards the end. We left the service and saw Carmen, her husband Mark, and their daughters Mattie and Sarah on our way out.

I dropped Christina off at her apartment after His Hands knowing that she had homework to do and I had video editing to do. I went home and ate a small lunch consisting mostly of left overs from the party last night. I began burning the raw footage over to discs to send to one of my clients who requested a copy of the uncut material. This process took about 2 hours total and during this time I worked on straightening and cleaning from last night's party. I then worked on correcting the mistakes I missed in the wedding reception video from 5-31-08. I finished these edits and left the project to render and burn to disc. At this point I laid down on the couch to watch some of the Law & Order: SVU marathon on USA. It wasn't long before I was watching my eyelids and was sound asleep. I woke up about 2 hours later and shortly after that I got a phone call from Christina letting me know that she could come over after her meeting at the Box at 5:30. This news made me smile and I woke up and finished up the work involved with the re-make of the reception video.

I was printing the label on the last disc when Christina arrived and we watched the tail end of Dumb and Dumber on TBS. After that was over Christina selected to watch Urban Legend as she hadn't seen a scary movie in a while. I was excited at the news that she liked scary movies! The movie was good and while watching it I realized that I used the influence of this movie in parts of the script of Sweet Dreams, the movie that Hickey and I made about 3 years ago. We enjoyed the movie and then watched the last 30 minutes of Kate & Leopold on TBS before saying goodnight. I walked her to her car and then opted to pack up the DVDs for shipping tomorrow and then going to bed early. I needed more sleep and hoped that my nap wouldn't prevent me from falling asleep easily. It didn't.

Meditation for the day: James 4:7-8 "Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded."

From the Desk 7/12/2008

This morning I woke up around 8:15 and proceeded to get ready to travel to Chickamauga for the day. I gathered up an extra change of clothes in case hiking got too dirty and I needed to save my car from contamination by mud. I checked the weather and though the chance of rain was slim, I knew that it would undoubtedly rain as I would be outside. My phone was ringing off the hook Saturday morning as I received a call from dad, then he passed me to mom. While on the phone with mom both Amy and Stacy beeped in and I eventually hit the road at 9:45, about 45 minutes later than I intended. The directions were simple enough on how to get there, but I knew there would be a couple of confusing areas as Hwy 136 seemed to zig-zag between different roads in several places. I only missed one turn and soon realized and corrected my mistake. I arrived at Aunt Paula's around 11:15 making fairly good time. (It's not that I sped a lot, its just that there's not much traffic on the roads once you venture away from I-75).

After getting a few things together, we loaded up in the truck and headed to Pigeon Mountain for our planned hiking excursion. I noticed a dark cloud looming overhead on the way to the mountain and made an advanced apology for being on this trip as I would guarantee that it would rain after we got on the trail. We arrived and sprayed ourselves down with bug repellent before hitting the trail. After we had been on the trail for about 10 minutes, it began to sprinkle drops of rain. I had to laugh at my unfortunate accuracy in predicting the weather. We followed the wooden boardwalk path until it ended shortly after a section was broken down by a fallen tree. The path from then on got a little rocky and more slippery. We arrived at what was supposed to be the base of the waterfall, but as evidence of the drought, there was not even a small stream flowing down the cascading rocks. We encountered a group of repellers that were climbing the face of a rock wall to the left of the waterfall's supposed location. We finally picked the trail back up and climbed up a steep section to make it to the road that took us to the the end of the trail. The trail ended in a field that reminded me of the top of a bald in the Smoky Mountains. We also crossed a pond that was home to several snapping turtles. The rain had stopped before we reached the top of the waterfall area, but as soon as we made our way back towards the car, the sky opened up and gave us all another shower. The rain felt cool and it was actually refreshing to feel it soaking into my clothes as a natural cooler. We reached the truck and headed to grab some lunch at Wendy's. We ate a quick bite and then made a brief stop off by Walmart to pick up food for the rest of Amy and Laura's stay. I stayed and talked briefly with everyone before I had to head back home to prepare for my party.

I arrived home at 6:00pm and after showering off from the hike and getting ready to go the the grocery store for party supplies it was 6:30. My party was supposed to start at 7:00 so needless to say, I felt a bit rushed. I drove to Super Target and sent a text to my party attendees to let them know I was running late and not to arrive before 7:30. I bought all the necessities for the party and then made my way home to finish setting everything up. I was carrying all the bags at once and my neighbor Joe was standing outside with some of his friends and was kind enough to unlock my door for me. See, good neighbors do still exist. I ordered the pizza, set up the snacks and got everything set around 7:45. My new tray with several sections that mom bought me worked out great (see picture for visual). Stacy showed up first around 8:00, then Christina and Tausha around 8:30. We ate some food and then played some Guitar Hero. It was hilarious to watch everyone else in their own way playing the game. I will definitely have footage of the next gathering as it could net me the million dollar prize on America's Funniest Home Videos. Tausha and Stacy left around 10:30 as they both had busy days tomorrow. Christina stayed and we watched Casino Royale. I walked her to her car and then said goodnight after after making plans to pick her up in the morning for His Hands. I went to sleep replaying the funny images of people dancing while playing the game and quickly drifted off to sleep.

Meditation for the day: Galatians 5:13 "You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature ; rather, serve one another in love."