Pot Planting?

I thought that I had escaped the world of cheap buys (thinking it was only a Ryan thing at the old store in MS), but not so...I got suckered into buy a whole cart of house plants for $3 on my 2nd night working at my new store! SO, Robert and I loaded up the car and brought the plants home because, well, why not? The thing I didn't think about was the fact that these plants might need a little tender loving care...which amounted to a bunch of re-potting and trimming that needed to be done. Thank God for mom, though-she said I could bring them down to her house and re-pot them there and get dinner to boot! So, I called Heather and we had our first hang out time since Robert and I got here a few weeks ago and it was so much fun! Getting dirty and playing with plants with Heather brought me back to the old days that we spent together at Middle Earth.:) After we dealt with some half-frozen potting soil (which I mostly managed to chip up and use with the help of a coal shovel) and some oddly sized pots that we found in mom's basement we had basically re-potted about 12 plants! Heather took 5 home with her, a few of the plants will go to the Little House with Luke and Katy, a few came home with me, a few will be mom or Nam's...it's just fun to give plants and make them healthy. I Feel like I'm just making the world better by providing house plants to keep the air clean.

It was also a great night because mom made an awesome dinner for all of us and Luke and Katy gave us a whole concert! I just asked if they would play a couple of songs for Heather since she hasn't heard them yet (completely forgetting that Robert hadn't heard them either) and they ended up using it as a practice session and gave us a whole beautiful set with old songs and new! Maggie Lane was sitting up and moving her hands and her head (mind you, she's only 10 weeks old) and just having such a blast with the music...it was awesome!

It is just so good to be home with mom and Buzz, all my friends, and with Luke and Katy here for a while too...life is good! Oh, and it's 50 degrees today too!

Millworks

Well, surprise of the century, I am actually enjoying being department manager of millworks! First off, it is so much easier than Seasonal because I only have to do paperwork for 1 department and I only have 2 Sales Specialists and no CSAs to take care of. But, really, it's just so much fun to be in a new department, learning new stuff, and finding new challenges. Where in Seasonal the challenges were: too much freight, top stock, keeping displays clean constantly, keeping blue carts full, NOT selling displays, etc-in Millworks the challenges are" keeping stock numbers correct, selling SOSs and installs, and making sure my Specialists realize that they need to do the work as well as the selling. Of course, many of the things I learned in Seasonal are coming in handy in Millworks-like learning bin locations and grey tape, labeling top stock, working all the correct paperwork to keep the department running, etc. Don't get me wrong, I've got my work cut out for me, but it's all about the little things rather than the overwhelming things. I'm learning all kinds of new stuff too-I've realized I want to build a house instead of buy an older one and fix it up because it is WAY too hard to put doors and windows into existing frames!:) And I have all kinds of great ideas about which types of doors and windows I would like to get. I Guess I'll have to work at Lowes at least until we build a house because I want only the best doors and windows, of course.:)

Store 2536 is so very different from store 0712 in Pascagoula-they are so much more laid back, but the store is actually much cleaner, the customer service is better, and all the associates work together better-they don't really have a choice because most of the time there is only 1 person in each deparment-if that. Last night I had the phones for Millworks, Electrical, and Lumber all at once! Also, the closers in each department work the freight that comes in at night instead of leaving it for the stock crew in the morning-if there IS a truck (they come in 2 or 3 times a week only). We have so few employees that there really ISN'T much of a stock crew and delivery does multiple jobs (like zamboni-ing the whole store at night) as well as cashiers helping out on the floor...if only Lowes 0712 could see how few people we have up here!

I've been told that things will get crazier as summer comes on, but, right now, I am enjoying learning, getting things organized, and making the department my own. I'm even putting doors into topstock with the picker (my muscles should be bigger soon!) and using star wars INSIDE the stoor to get down pallets of doors! How odd to be living this type of life.

Good Ol Lowes 0712

Can't figure out how to post the video on here, but check out this link to see the store that I started at and will always have come from. I miss you Lowes 0712!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHAddiqvAu4

Fun in the Harris Household

So, we were really excited to move into a house with hardwood floors because that meant we could use our remote controlled mouse toy to play with our cats. Yes, I Know, we're dorks and this video is probably only entertaining to us, but still...

Officially Mainahs!

Well, it has finally happened...Robert and I are Mainers! It's time to celebrate (as you can see from the phot of me and Boo with our first drink in our new house)!
I have put some photos of the house before we moved everything in...it'll be a while before the decorated photos come in, but I wanted to show SOMETHING for my story...
SO,
After a 3 day drive that was only made sane by the wonderful presence of my best friend PJ who flew down from Maine to help me drive Robert's truck with the little trailer on it. Robert drove the big 24FT Budget Truck with a car trailer behind it with my VW beetle on it. IT was quite a funny little caravan...until we got halfway through the 2nd day when the little truck went VRRROOOOOOOMMMMM and just stopped driving in the middle of a rainy highway. WIth some fast thinking I pulled over and PJ picked up the walkie and got Robert over behind us (good job!)...at which point I tried not to freak out and calmly called AAA to come tow us somewhere. Luckily, this time we were not in the middle of the Mojavi Desert like last time...we only had to be towed 4 miles. While we were waiting Robert was even able to make the truck work again, but we figured we better not try anything stupid. After much discussion we decided to put the truck on the car trailer and leave the little trailer with the mower in the middle of Virginia with a very nice tow company who had a fence to keep it behind. So PJ and I got to drive the VW the rest of the way, which was a much better situation except for the fact that the Budget truck couldn't go over 70mph on a flat highway, let alone on all the hilly roads across the Northeastern part of the country. Still, with our patience thin, we reached our 85 mile mark and rolled across the Maine border with high hearts and sighs of relief.:) Oh, I forgot to mention that, once we moved the little truck onto the trailer, Robert was stuck all FOUR cats in the cab of the Budget truck! Apparently they get hot really easily too, and it took him a while to figure out that that was why 2 of them were meow constantly despite their sleeping pills that we gave them each morning. I'm not even going to go into how hard it was to deal with finding a hotel that would accept cats (and sneaking them into a hotel that didn't).
So we got here and unloaded the VW enough to take PJ home and drive down to mom's to spend the night because there was no way we were unloading the truck then...and mom not only had dinner for us, but had all ready drawn a jacuzzi bath for me! I love my mom! She and Buzz were also awesome and came back with us the next morning to help unload the truck. So, between Mom, Buzz, Me, Robert, and Aaron (our friend who showed up just in time to move the heavy stuff and help fold the mattress in half to get it up the stairs) we were able to get everything out of the truck... except the piano. Now, I don't know who knows about the piano, but, basically, it was free and it's heavy. I am convinced I will re-learn how to play once it gets tuned, but I didn't get it tuned down South because it was going to be moved, so I haven't started learning yet. I was told it was heavy getting into our MS house, but I had no idea how heavy it really was until I watched Dad and Robert load it up on the moving truck...it has wheels, but they really don't work. When we went to unload it at our new house we tried the ramp, but that wasn't going to work; we tried just picking it up and lifting it off the back of the truck, that didn't work; finally they backed the truck up to the FRONT porch (a feat within itself), loaded the ramp onto the porch and used a combination on blankets and dollies to slide it down the ramp on its back! And there it stayed for the aftemoon waiting for a furniture dolly that was supposed to appear (why I didn't think of a furniture dolly before I don't know). Luckily, when Robert and Aaron took the extra appliances down to Round Pond for storage they ran into our very strong friend Larry who found a furniture dolly and lifted one end of the piano all by himself...and then it was in. PHEW! What a fiasco for a piano...let's hope we can tune it!
So, now we are plugging away at the boxes and the furniture (we have too many couches and not enough tables) and trying to catch up on lost sleep.
























































I start at Lowes on Thursday as, DUH DUH DUH DAH: department manager of MILLWORKS. Seriously, I thought that they were kidding when they kept saying they might put me in Millworks, but I guess they weren't. JEEEZ! SO, I'm basically starting a completely new job because I have to actually learn the details of selling systems, how to measure doors and windows and all kinds of shit I don't even know how to do. And WHY did they put me in Millworks? Because they want me to motivate their two sales specialists to sell better, approach customers, and work their paperwork better. HA! That's what I never wanted to do in Seasonal, but maybe it's because I didn't have time over there and now it's going to be my main focus so it will be okay. I am up for a learning experience, I guess...especially since I get a raise and I'll get spiffs for selling SOS's.
Anyway, that's the update...sorry it's not funny or interesting, but it IS informative.:)

Made it!

Just a quick word to say, "YES! WE MADE IT!" I'll tell all the stories as soon as I am done running back and forth between lowes and Robert's 1/2 broken truck...
But, we are here. Our house is awesome. We have internet. We have DirectTV. The cats are happy...and the weather has been great (only a little snow left!).
I miss everyone in the South all ready, but we'll keep in touch. Promise!

Yes, it's here...

So, folks, we are finally in the last leg of the packing and moving on to the MOVING...I should take a photo of the house and how it looks right now and then upload it, but I'm too lazy after showing PJ around P-town, getting sunburned from riding with the top down, packing all day, and trying not to let Robert stress me out (which he actually didn't, amazingly). We pretty much finished packing and are ready to load the truck up tomorrow. I'm dreading the last ten boxes of random shit that I won't be able to avoid packing, but I'm just really ready to go. I'm psyched about riding for 27 hours with PJ, a little worried about Robert driving the huge-ass truck, and really hot from my sunburn. Still, it will all work out and there will be lots of fun...first of which will be Thursday morning when we have to stuff pills down the throats of 4 cats.:)
Love you all and see you soon...I may not blog for a few weeks, but I'll be back!

Loving Middle Earth

We had an awesome weekend with the Turner/Kalloch family at Middle Earth. Perry and Janet and the girls surprised us and Holly and Emma Faith were in town staying with Faith, so we all got together and had a great evening and Sunday too. I learned how to play Hearts and we planted trees and the girls went fishing...it was a perfect Goodbye to Middle Earth. I'll miss everyone and Middle Earth itself, so I made this slideshow to remember the awesomeness:
PS: If you view it as a full page it looks even better...

Maggie Lane Knowles at 6 weeks

Just wanted to share some photos of Maggie Lane that we took while in Maine meeting her for the first time...

Our New Yellow House

Life has been so busy lately, but I've finally gotten a chance to sit down and write a little bit about our exciting news! We DID find a house in Maine and it is beautiful and adorable and very very awesome and cute! It was built in the late 1800s and the people who own it have completely restored it, repainted it, and put in all new appliances and heating and electrical. It's 3 stories and it has a basement too! I'm just so totally excited about it! Robert still wants a little bit more space than we have-because it IS in the town of bath and the back yard isn't very big, but I'm happy because we have off-street parking and the house is just ABSOLUTELY wonderful! Each room is a different color, it's old-fashioned, but still new feeling. The counter-tops are granite...I'm just totally loving this house! Ya'll will have to wait until we get up there before you see photos of the inside (because I forgot my camera when we went to get our keys), but here are some photos of the outside in all the snow.:)
Funny how the new house is yellow too, right? But the front door is orange, not red.:)