As March marches on

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

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

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

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

Re-cap of the weekend

Friday, March 28:

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

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

Sunday, March 30:

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

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

Warm weather = sleepy Phillip

Today started out as each day usually does. The sun rose and so did the temperature. I knew it was supposed to be a fairly warm day so I was looking forward to the time I would be outside (basically when I was driving to and from work) I met with Dave this morning to discuss in detail my new focus and my biggest job to continuously work on. I will be developing ways to gain customer information, build a database of our customers, and take the information in that database to help guide our marketing decisions. For example, we will be adding a section during the sale transaction that allows the cashier to input the customer's zip code. Once a month I will gather that information and use it to determine, on a monthly basis, where the customers live that shop the most often with us. This will help us when we decide what zip codes to target when we send out inserts in the newspaper or other media. I worked on creating a customer profile for pretty much the rest of the day to help guide me in answering the questions that will help us build an accurate and useful customer database. I know that this is probably not that interesting to my loyal readers (all 2 of you), but this type of process excites me. I left work to drive home in the 72 degrees and sunny weather. As I approached my apartments I almost considered to keep on driving until the sun went down, but I was low on gas and knew I would be getting hungry soon so I just went home.

When I got home I started working on the video editing rather aggressively. I finalized the menu and sub-menu screens and synced the 2 video tracks to began transitioning between clips. I completed the first 15 minutes of the ceremony video, and decided to take a break for dinner after getting halfway through the bulk of the editing process. I ate some noodles in Alfredo sauce with some garlic bread. After that I went back to work on the video for just a little longer. I should be done with everything including the menu links in another hour of editing. That is good since I really want to be done with this before the weekend so I can edit the reception video by the middle of next week. I had to stop editing around 9:30 to prepare for the Tennessee vs. Louisville basketball game that had a tip-off of 9:57pm. Tennessee struggled with many things in the first half, the most critical one being the inability to score and maintain possession of the ball. In the second half the Vols came out and played much better. They cut the Louisville lead down to one. Then Louisville went on an 8-0 run to gain back a large lead. The game was a lot of back and forth which made it painful to watch. Later in the game I realized that there were several calls not made when there was lots of contact. Some of these calls went both ways, but the majority of them seemed to favor Louisville (I know my perspective may be skewed but the TV announcers often agreed with my point of view). The game seemed over for the Vols around the 4:00 minute mark in the second half. The final score of the game: Tennessee 60 - Louisville 79 . Time for bed now. Work begins in 7 and a half hours.

Meditation of the day: Jeremiah 29:11 "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you ad not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

A beautiful day in the neighborhood

Today was the first day it was supposed to start warming back up and I woke up more than ready for it. I headed out to work without a jacket, perhaps tempting the skies to dump a blizzard on Kennesaw just to spite me. I was relieved when this did not occur. I arrived at work to find that I really had nothing on my plate to do, so I did what I always do when that happens. I surfed the internet browsing competitors' websites. After doing this for about half an hour, I decided to try some brainstorming on a project that Vickie had given me. The objective: to create a graphic envelope front that would entice the bookkeepers to open the letter promoting our gift certificates for teachers instead of just laying it to the side to be forgotten until its too late. I tried several different drawings as you can see here. I worked on that for a while, and then I realized it was time to go to lunch. I kept my usual lunch date with myself at my apartment. (Hey at least I never get stood up or excuses) I returned to work and Dave caught me me asking if we could spend a good deal of time later that day talking/exploring how to build us an outstanding customer database. I said sure, and was looking forward to adding some more tasks to my plate. He came back about an hour later and said that we would have to postpone this meeting as the regional managers and Vickie we needing him to give input into their budgeting meeting to prepare for the upcoming fiscal year. I said that was fine (of course). Before I left work Stacy asked me if I wanted to come walking with her and Cooper around 6:30 after work. I said that sounded like fun. This is based on 2 reasons: 1. Cooper is hysterical to watch indoors and I can only imagine that he is even greater to observe in the wild, and 2. I will do anything to be outside on a beautiful day like this day one.

I went home briefly and ate a small supper, changed into some appropriate walking attire, and then headed over to Stacy's. We decided to walk around her neighborhood as we were both unsure as to how far Cooper would feel like walking. That ended up being a good choice as Cooper was a good sport, but ultimately wanted to do nothing more than smell, lick, and eat things in addition to walking in a weaving pattern in an attempt to trip Stacy, me, or sometime both. We dropped Cooper off and continued on another lap around the subdivision to make our efforts at exercise more worth while. Cooper was slightly distraught at being abandoned at home while his mommy left as you can see at his attempt to peer out the front window.We finished and returned to Stacy's house to find Cooper missing us greatly (or maybe he just wanted a treat?). I drank some water and then made my way back to the apartment.

I arrived strangely inspired to began serious editing work on the wedding video and got the intro video, the main menu, the scene selection menu, and the main video track done. I looked up at the clock after that and saw that it was 10:15 and I probably needed to stop before I began the next phase that would certainly keep me up past midnight to complete. So I surrendered to sleep to fight again another day.

Meditation of the day: Psalm 8:1,3 "O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place"

Probably should be grocery shopping...

I woke up on time this morning, and felt that I needed a reward to celebrate that occurrence. So on the way to work I stopped off and picked up some Chick-fil-A as my personal treat. I got to work and began working on the new version of the marketing calendar to include not only all of the activities from this year, but also to put it in a format that made everyone able to read it quickly and glean from it what information they needed. That process took longer than I expected, but it is coming together fairly quickly with little frustration. I ran back to the apartment for lunch and pulled some more video footage over to my desktop PC to begin editing tonight (hopefully). The remainder of the work day was fairly uneventful. The only thing that stuck out in my mind is Vickie realized that when Chris gave me a copy of the VBS flyer, which was by now waiting in line to be printed at Printing Impressions, she only gave me a copy she had. It didn't show the back side that had all the information about the stores, their hours, and our website info. I hurriedly re-made that back page since no one had an electronic version that I could edit, and then sent it out to the printer before we wasted money on mis-prints. When I left work the weather had warmed up a lot from the chilly 27 degrees the day began at. That was encouraging as I still miss the weather we enjoyed on our Charleston trip.

I got home and found a U.S. Mail Express envelope tucked under my doormat. I saw that it was from Chan, and when I opened it I found Flat Stanley and his entire journal of his travels. Basically Flat Stanley is a boy who was flattened when a bulletin board fell on him in class. He now travels through the mail to various people in many different places and will eventually return home on April 28th. He will be helping me film and edit videos this week and may even make an appearance at The School Box! I started pulling the last of the wedding footage over to my computer before fixing some dinner. I decided to wait until tomorrow night to began actually editing the wedding. I seem to get more accomplished if I work on it for a longer period of time in a few instances rather than work on it a little bit at a time. I watched some tv while finishing updating my myspace page (new layout, song, quote....check it out). I found that time passed much faster than I realized and it was time to do some reading before slipping into my sleeping coma for the night. Today was a good day, but I hope tomorrow is more eventful...I could use some excitement to liven up the days.

Meditation for the day: Psalm 40:1-2 "I waited patiently for the Lord; He turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand."

Moody Monday

The work week begin by me oversleeping until 7:25am when I usually leave for work at 7:40. I was only a few minutes late, which doesn't really matter as long as it doesn't happen often, but since I rushed to get ready I felt drained and tired the entire day. I worked on some furniture tags for the Chattanooga store and then was putting some final touches on the summer learning flyer to go to print. I received a call at 10am from our rep with News for Kids (program that provides newspapers for classrooms to use for educational purposes) wanting to move our meeting to earlier in the day. This was a surprise to me as I had forgotten that we even had a meeting scheduled. We moved the meeting from 2pm to 12:30pm so they could make another meeting later in the day. I was working on various things until I realized that it was 12:45 and they had not arrived yet. They called shortly before 1pm and said that they were on their way. They arrived at 1:15pm and we began our meeting. They basically gave me an overview of the history of this program and our involvement with sponsoring it since its creation. The lady talked very fast and was extremely passionate about the product. We aren't up for renewal yet, but I know that we will be later this year so I was glad to have met our reps and know more about this program before we agree to continue our involvement. I took a late lunch and got back to work around 2:45pm. I don't really remember what I did for the rest of the day because all I wanted to do was go to sleep.

After I left work Stacy and I headed over to Applebee's to meet Leslie for some dinner. At first we thought we were going to have to hang at a bookstore for a bit until Leslie arrived from the Howell Mill store, but she called and left work a little early so we were able to go straight there. We got the sample appetizer for our meal (Stacy and Leslie split one and I had one all to myself!) and we talked ll about our Easter weekends, my Charleston trip, and our upcoming weeks to see where our schedules aligned so we could hang out some more. It was good to hang out with good friends at Applebee's since I opted out of Friday night's trip with the Movies 4 Sale crowd.

I went home and begin pulling over video footage of the wedding from March 15th. I also spent some time to catch up on laundry from the weekend and generally straightening around the apartment. Not that anyone would come over and be appalled at its condition, but I would go insane if it were not organized and clean. I spent some time catching on former blogs that I neglected to write/post and also spent a bit of time napping to catch up from my late evening Saturday night/Sunday morning. I eventually decided to go to sleep in a classic fashion, watching an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. I head the into finish and that is the last thing I remember until my alarm clock would certainly scream the following morning.

Meditation of the day: Psalm 37:7-8 "Be still before the Lord an wait patiently for him; do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes. Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret - it leads only to evil."

He is Risen!

Easter Sunday i usually filled with expectations for great music and worship, but for some reason I woke up viewing it like any other Sunday. That feeling left quickly as I arrived at CBCB to assist in recording the services and heard the choir specials for the day being rehearsed. There is one song that is a combination of "Christ Alone" and "The Solid Rock" that sent chills down my spine as the melodies and harmonies blended together to make a heavenly sound. The first service went fairly well as I was running the recording sound board for the first time in almost two months! My sidekick Chuckles was there to make sure I didn't botch everything up beyond repair. I decided to sit in the second service with Hickey, his "friend" and his friend's daughter. It was a different experience being in the service and singing with everyone. Both were a wonderful experience and I feel were more meaningful than my last few Easters.

After the service I drove mom and dad over to G-mom and Papa's for an Easter lunch extravaganza! We had ham, cauliflower casserole, green beans (I passed on these of course), a type of jello salad, and macaroni and cheese. For dessert we enjoyed either Mountain Dew Apple Cobbler or Buttermilk Pie. It was good, but as always at family gatherings I ate too much. We sat in the sun room talking about my job and other various topics until the UT basketball game came on TV. We watched the first half there and at halftime, we ventured over to Grandmother's to join the other side of the family and watch the second half of the game. It was so nice to see so much family in one day. It reminds me of how blessed I am to have a close family that is willing to travel to see each other on special days.

I stayed later than intended in Knoxville, but made my way out of town around 6pm. The traffic was fairly light considering it was the close of Easter weekend and that usually means lots of people traveling. I arrived in Kennesaw around 8:45 and proceeded to unpack a bit from my trips. I decided to take a break from that an watch the Lady Vols play Oral Roberts in their first game of this year's NCAA Women's Tournament. They were playing up to their usual high standards as I slowly drifted off to sleep and rested soundly until Monday began.

Mediation of the day: Psalm 33:20-21 "We wait in hope for the Lord;he is our help and our shield. In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in His holy name."