From the Desk 7/25/2008

I woke up this morning very sleepy and dreading working in the warehouse. I felt the effects of the hike from yesterday in my legs and back being sore still, and instantly decided that the hike was not really a wise decision. I got ready for work slowly and packed some soup for lunch because I had run out of time to fix anything else. I got to work and began listening to a couple of voicemails that I had received since yesterday. I also answered a few emails and talked with Stacy and Mike about our next steps in updating the website header for the month of August. I made my way back to the warehouse around 8:45 and found only a couple of carts to pack up. I was also soon joined by Eric and AJ who were there to help pack up orders. After about an hour Eric ended up going home not feeling well, but it still left two of us to tackle the packing of orders, which I thought would be enough. The orders kept flowing and we kept packing at a steady pace until I went to lunch.

For lunch Stacy bought me a sub from Jersey Mike's. It was her treat because I was going to mow her grass tomorrow morning so I agreed, not really wanting to eat the soup I brought anyway. We took Mike's order and checked with Christina to see if she wanted anything then we left to go get our food. I ordered the Chipotle Philly Cheesteak and it was amazing. I highly recommend that you try one at the Jersey Mike's in Knoxville (on Lovell Rd. I think) After eating I returned to the warehouse to find that AJ had gone home for the day and I was the only one packing up orders. I was greeted by 8 carts full of orders to box up, and I was positive that with 3 people pulling orders and one person packing the number of orders to be packed would only grow. I was right. I packed as fast as I could but still took care to verify the orders had the correct products and quantities. Around 3:00 the people pulling orders realized that I was the only one packing them up and so Peggy, Sandy, and Glen stopped pulling orders to help me catch up. It took until 4:00 to get caught up and at that point James, the warehouse manager, decided that we shouldn't pull any more orders until Monday. I returned to my desk and was sitting there when Mike made the comment that it was foolish to try and start my day at the office at 4:15 and that I should just go home since I looked exhausted. I didn't argue with his recommendation and after making some plans with Christina for tonight I headed home.

I did a few things online and then around 5:00 I laid down to try and take a nap. It wasn't difficult to fall asleep and I slept until 7:00. I woke up and got ready to take Christina out to dinner. I arrived at her apartment and found that she too had taken a nap and had woken up just a few minutes before I showed up. I told her it was lady's choice for our dinner location tonight and she suggested Chili's. That was fine with me as I love their Triple Dippers appetizers. We had to wait about 15 minutes to be seated, but after that our service was speedy and our server was really good. He had the balance between attentiveness and privacy down pat. We both ordered the Triple Dippers (with the only difference in choices being Christina's chicken fingers and my Shanghai wings). After we ate we went back to Christina's apartment to watch the new episode of "Psych" on USA. We watched the show which was really good (as expected), and after it was over I said goodnight as we were both too tired to watch the episode of "House" that came on after "Psych". I drove home and went to bed very soon after walking in the door. This marked the first night this week I've gone to bed before 11:30 and I intended on sleeping in tomorrow morning to take full advantage of the opportunity to catch up on sleep.

Meditation for the day: Hebrews 1:1 “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”

From the Desk 7/24/2008

This morning I got to work after a stop off by Chick-fil-A for some food. I began working in the warehouse around 8:30 after getting a few things out of the way for the marketing department (aka: me) I was going to be working on packing up the orders that people had pulled to go to schools. This was a new process for me on this particular system, but I worked with Glen and he taught me everything I would need to know to get by. I acclimated myself to the surroundings in the warehouse rather quickly and helped them stay on top of packing. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Christina had also been selected to pull orders for the day. I joked with her that things were reversed from the normal order. I usually create signs that they have to put out, creating work for her. Today, she was pulling orders for me to pack, so she was creating work for me. I worked on packing for about 2 and a half hours until 11:00. Then I returned to my desk to check on things before joining "the family" for lunch in the break room.

After enjoying some delicious left-overs for lunch, I returned to the warehouse. I packed for about 2 hours before we had caught up and reached a dry spell as the people packing had gone to lunch so the flow of orders to pack had ceased. At that point I actually pulled a few orders myself (making sure that there were only items in the warehouse on my orders.....I know where nothing on the sales floor). This went better than expected, but created a problem in that the orders that I pulled, someone else had to pack. So, there was still an issue of steady work for everyone to do. The packers returned from lunch and the orders began to flow again. I worked on packing up orders until 5:20 and realized that I needed to go home and change before picking up Christina and meeting Mike for a hike.

At 6:00 I picked up Christina from the Box and we hit the road to the Pine Log Creek Trail, which is slightly further away than the Pine Mountain Trail. It took about 35 minutes to reach the trail parking lot, which I passed as the entrance was hidden by several trees. We hiked the 4.5 mile trail and it appeared to be not very difficult in terms of elevation changes according to the trail map. It lied. It is true that you only climb 200-300 feet over the course of the trail. It failed to mention that you would make this change about 7 times! There were several foot bridges we crossed and there were two overlooks. The overlooks were not particularly stunning, but then again, we weren't very high up either. We encountered only one other group of people on the trail and we almost gained a dog, MJ, in the process as he wouldn't leave to go with his group once he saw Mike's dog, Cheyenne. After walking MJ back to his owners, we continued on the trail. Once we had completed half of the West Loop and half of the East Loop we reached a quarry and stopped for some photos and a break. We pushed on to finish the trail and arrived at the parking lot about 1 hour and 45 minutes after we began. We were all tired as the day's activities at work had drained most of our energy. We drove our separate ways and I dropped Christina off at the Box to get her car. I went home and showered (I really smelled bad by that point) and then got a call from Christina. I went over to her apartment to watch a couple of episodes of "Boy Meets World" before calling it a night and heading home just in time to fall asleep the instant my head hit the pillow.

Meditation for the day: Psalm 119:60 “I will hasten and not delay to obey your commands.”

From the Desk 7/23/2008

This morning I woke up easily and for some reason didn't feel very tired even though I'm still a bit behind on my sleep quota. I headed into work and apparently my curse of influencing gas prices has returned. I bought gas yesterday morning at $3.99 and this morning when I drove by the same station it had dropped to $3.97 per gallon. So make sure to check my blog before buying gas and when I mention my oil-based purchase know that if you wait a day you can benefit from lower gas prices as they always drop after I purchase some. I got situated at my desk and then had a brief chat with Stacy about the 2009 catalog. We will be joining Dave for lunch today to discuss more of the details and I have been invited to join them as I will be helping Stacy with certain aspects of the catalog this year. I worked on converting the template for our new employee name tags from Microsoft Word to NeoOffice (an Open Office product) so customer service can handle the incoming requests for new employees' name badges. I also was caught by Dave and he asked me for the rest of the week to dress in shorts and t-shirt so I could help him working in the warehouse. I played catch-up on phone message responses that I had received from the past two days and that took longer than expected. Stacy and I piled in Dave's car around 11:30 for some lunch at Mellow Mushroom.

We discussed options for the 2009 catalog and conversed about a possible new specialty catalog for distribution in August of 2009. Once we returned to work I began sketching out some brainstorming ideas for a creative catalog cover for next year. I used the method of a word list that Professor Blakeman taught me at UT for how to come up with creative ideas that didn't stray too far from the product. (If you're curious I will explain it the next time I'm in town). I came up with 5 fairly solid concepts and sketched them out on my drawing pad. I also made a quick run down to Atlanta Business Circulators to pick up a box of the new catalogs to see how they turned out. I mainly wanted to put to rest a little paranoia that had crept into my brain over lunch about potential problems with the latest cover. I was not disappointed when I opened the box. I took a picture of the two covers (the one on the left I didn't design, the one on the right I did) to demonstrate the different direction I am hoping to guide The School Box in creative endeavors. I worked the remainder of the afternoon helping Stacy update the items with sale prices from the BTS flyer on our website so they would reflect the sale prices when customers were shopping. This was a slow process as I managed to finish one page in 2 hours. I have 3 more pages to go, but hopefully they will go faster. I headed home once 5:00 came about.

I ate a quick bite and then set the ceremony video I finished yesterday to render and burn. I also apparently took a quick power nap as my phone ringing woke me up after a quick 30 minute snooze. It was Leslie (from Howell Mill) calling to catch up since we haven't been able to get together for our usual "weekly dates" with Stacy due to the busy season. We talked for a while and then I got my daily workout in as I did about 30 minutes of Wii boxing. Christina called when she got out of class and she came over to hang out. We ended up watching "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" on USA. Once the movie ended I knew that I needed to say goodnight to Christina and go to sleep even though I didn't want to. But I knew that she had to work a full day tomorrow too so it was better for both of us to get some sleep. I walked her to her car and then said goodnight. I walked back into the apartment and crashed on my bed after a few minutes of checking emails for the last time tonight.

Meditation for the day: Psalm 112:5 “Good will come to him who is generous and lends freely, who conducts his affairs with justice.”

From the Desk 7/22/2008

This morning I woke up on time and got ready for work at a more leisurely pace then yesterday. I stopped off on my way to work to buy some gas (still at $3.99 per gallon) and then a quick trip to the ATM so I could mail out the wedding DVDs later today. When I arrived at work I began working on some rough versions of some slips and cards that we could use in our shipments that we send out to customers, thanking them for shopping with us. It went fairly quickly and I think they came out looking pretty good. Now I just have to get with Vickie and see if that is something we want to move forward with before or after Back-to-School. I also set-up and scheduled the next blast email that we will be sending out concerning the Georgia Classroom Gift Card. Now that I have done this process several times it isn't as much of a chore. I don't really have to look at my cheat sheet of instructions to get everything set-up correctly so that also cuts down on the amount of time it takes to set it up. I checked the several voice mails that had accumulated on my phone before going to lunch with Mike, Carmen, Stacy, Tausha, and Blair in the break room. I remembered to bring my left overs today so I was good and didn't go out to eat.

After lunch I worked briefly with Mike to remove a coupon that was expired from our website. I'm not sure what the process was before with this, but we had received several calls that people had received our blast email, clicked on the link to the coupon on our website and saw that the laminating coupon had already expired. This was obviously confusing to the customer and now we have resolved that issue. I spent the better part of the afternoon organizing files and throwing away clutter from my cubical. It is amazing how much junk you can accumulate in such a small space. After finishing the clean-up my area looked a little empty but I know it won't take long for it to fill back up. I also worked up a rough drawing of a character that we are trying to develop to use in addition to "Crayon Boy". It has been a problem that I can't really draw people so I have taken the approach of a modified stick boy doing various things to try and illustrate my thoughts. Here is one very rough example of him "serving up customer service" from the School Box. (I apologize for the color issues, I still don't know what causes that). I walked Christina out at 5:00 as we were both leaving to go home. The hiking trip got canceled on account of everyone being too tired or having too much to do. Christina had to go home and study for 2 tests tomorrow and I needed to work on the video.

I got home, had a quick dinner, and then went to work on the video at 6:00. The editing went much faster than anticipated and I was finished editing the ceremony at 7:15. All I had to do was set the menu links and preview the project before burning it off to disc and I was saving that for tomorrow as I had some other printing of inserts and labels I wanted to get out of the way first. I was finishing up that stuff when Christina called. She had completed her necessary studying for the night so I took "Clue" over to her apartment and we watched it while the rain was pounding on the windows outside. We enjoyed the movie and sat on the couch talking about work and the possibility of another double date with Leslie (from Howell Mill) and Brian. I finally tore myself away and said goodnight. I drove home in almost perfectly cool temperature weather with no rain and no storms. I arrived safely and promptly went to sleep.

Meditation for the day: Philippians 1:3 "I thank my God every time I remember you."

From the Desk 7/21/2008

I woke up this morning smiling from my good times this weekend and then quickly realizing that it was over and Monday morning had arrived. I also quickly realized that I had overslept by about 45 minutes! I quickly got ready for work and then joined the other drivers on their way to work. I arrived and was greeted with the discovery that the air conditioner in the office area was out and it was just over 80 degrees according to the thermometer in the hallway. We were assured that the repair man had been contacted and would be there sometime before lunch. In retrospect, every one's definition of lunchtime is different so we really had no idea when he would arrive to bring us relief. I worked on more signs for some furniture items for the stores in addition to finishing and printing the Tax Holiday signs for the GA stores. I also proofed and responded via fax to a coupon offer in a local flyer near our Douglasville store. The office warmth made it a little hard to concentrate as it was warm enough to make me sleepy. It actually reminded me of my Western Civilization II class at UT which met in the Dougherty Engineering Building (not air conditioned auditorium) at 2:30 in the afternoon in the Spring semester. That class was difficult, not content wise, but it was difficult to remain conscious through the lectures due to the heat of the room. But I digress.....

We took lunch later than usual this week as we waited for Mike to wrap up a meeting so he could join us. It ended up just being me, Carmen, and Mike so we went to Ted's Montana Grill. I had the George's Cadillac burger with fries and it was delicious. I have now used my one day I'm allowed to eat out this week on Monday so I must make an effort to stay strong and refrain from eating out any more until the weekend. We returned to the office and by then the air conditioning had begun working and had already significantly cooled down the office area. I worked on a new project that we might use to display our sales pieces on the website. It is a bit outside my realm of knowledge for how to do it, but I am trying to learn how to use flash animation to create a catalog that you flip the pages on like you were holding it in your hands. My efforts didn't reach very far today, but there is always the rest of the week as there is no real time limit to get this ready to utilize as a marketing tool. 5:00 rolled around faster than usual and I headed home to do some video work before hopefully seeing Christina later.

I worked on the video for about an hour and then had some cereal for dinner (trying the 2 bowls a day meal plan again). After that I decided to hone my boxing skills on the Wii Sports game. I boxed for about an hour and then decided to stop when I had trouble lifting my arms above my head from fatigue. I took a shower and then was working on some stuff online when Christina called to tell me she was out of class. I decided to surprise her so on my way to her apartment I stopped and picked us both up a Thin Mint Blizzard from Dairy Queen. We watched a re-run of "House, M.D." on FOX and even though it was a re-run it was an episode I hadn't seen. We then were channel surfing until we settled on "Cool Runnings" which I had not seen in about 5 years. It was still really good. After talking briefly with Hickey when he called I said goodnight to Christina and made my way back home. It had begun to rain and I saw some lightning flashing across the sky on my drive home, but it never really stormed. I went to sleep in preparation of another day of busy times at work.

Meditation for the day: Matthew 16:15-16 “But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?" Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

From the Desk 7/20/2008

This morning I woke up at 8:30 and did a few things online before getting ready for His Hands. I picked Christina up around 9:30 and we headed off to church. We had determined that even though she had to work if the service ran over I could just drop her at work since it was basically on my way home or if there was time I would take her back to her at her apartment. The service began and the music was instantly awesome. There seemed to be a greater energy in the room than normal and the music reflected that. We observed the Lord's Supper and then worshiped through a song played by the female lead vocalist while she played beautifully rich chords on the piano. It was truly a close moment with the Father. The regular pastor was back to teach this weekend and we talked about the hard sayings of Jesus and what he really wants from us. The main scripture focus was John 6:28-29. We also touched on the fact that the God of the Old Testament was very rules oriented and seemed cruel and harsh, but the God of the New Testament (Jesus) told us how to live without making hundreds of rules to live by. We sang a song after the message that focused not only on how we are never alone because we have God, but we also have our brothers and sisters in Christ to turn to with our struggles. The song was called You Got Me and Jesus.

The service let out at the normal time and so I dropped Christina off at her apartment so she could take her car to work. I went home and ate a quick lunch before pulling over the last of the video footage for the last wedding on my to do list. I ended up taking a nap for an hour or so after I got the intro video, the main & sub menus created, and lining up the two main video tracks. After that I ran to the store quickly to pick up a few things for the dinner I was going to cook Christina and I tonight when she gets out of work. I began cooking dinner after talking on the phone with mom for a while about the weeks happenings. My timing couldn't have been better as dinner was completely ready about 2 minutes after Christina arrived. We ate baked chicken marinated in lime juice, butter, and Italian salad dressing mix. We also had pasta with a olive oil & garlic sauce. The meal was topped of with some Sister Schubert yeast rolls. It was delicious and I'm not saying that just because I was the chef.

After dinner we watched Happy Campers. Christina had heard a lot about this movie as I told her that Hickey said she had to watch it someday and I warned her that I was afraid that she might not talk to me after seeing it. I took the chance anyway as she seems to have very similar tastes in movies and I figured she wouldn't really run away (but she might not come back!) She laughed through most of the movie and in the end she actually liked it (which meant that she was ok in Hickey's book). Afterwards we were flipping though channels on TV when we came across the movie Titanic on TNT. We stopped here and watched the movie, which was only 30 minutes from the beginning, until the ship sank and the famed theme song "My Heart Will Go On" began playing over the credits. I then walked Christina to her car, not wanting to acknowledge that the weekend was over, and said goodnight. I gathered up my things for work in the morning and then turned in for the night.

Meditation for the day: John 6:28-29 'They replied, “We want to perform God’s works, too. What should we do?” Jesus told them, “This is the only work God wants from you: Believe in the one he has sent.”'

From the Desk 7/19/2008

I slept in this morning until 10:15 and it was wonderful! I probably could have slept longer, but I knew I had to get up and do some video work. I worked on the reception video that I had to finish today and managed to finish it around 2:00. One would think that the end of the editing would signal the end of the work, but that isn't true. I had a terrible time trying to get the video to render and burn without crashing. I fought back and forth with my computer until it finally worked and finished burning around 6:15pm. I did print the labels and inserts during this process so it wasn't a total waiting game. I copied the disc and packaged everything up to mail out on Monday.

Christina called and told me that she would come over after her mom came to pick up Sadie, her cat. She has decided to let Sadie go stay with her mom and dad since she isn't home very much between school and work (and me too I guess). I ate a quick bite and finished just as Christina arrived. We decided that even though we weren't at the drive-in we could still have a double feature movie night. We watched The Fantastic Four and then The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Both movies were excellent. I had seen them before, but this was Christina's first viewing of them and she enjoyed them. After the movies were over we found ourselves watching old episodes of Family Matters on Nick at Night. They really don't make TV shows like that anymore, and we both couldn't help but laugh through the two episodes we watched reminiscing on our younger days. Once Family Matters ended I walked Christina to her car and we said goodnight. I went inside and promptly went to sleep as I didn't want to fall behind on sleep after almost catching up from sleeping in this morning.

Meditation for the day: Psalm 119:30 “I have chosen the way of truth; I have set my heart on your laws.”