I’m having a lovely morning so far. I didn’t expect it to be good – it is, after all, a Monday. A Monday where I’m late on a project and leading a meeting that’s bound to be frustrating and on a day when we’re having really lovely weather outside and I’m stuck in a cold, industrial building with no windows. But unexpected things just keep on popping up and they’re making it a fun day.
Yesterday at church, a reporter from the local newspaper came to the service and took photos so he could write an article about the “Shoes for Soles” project that we did. It was “Barefoot Sunday” and everyone was encouraged to bring a pair of shoes to donate and go barefoot for the rest of the service. The church collected over a thousand shoes to send out to people in Haiti and Rowanda.
The front of the newspaper today is 2/3 covered in a picture of the piano player’s foot. And I’m standing in the background—blurry, but still vaguely recognizable as me. The article that’s supposed to be on page 10 – 11 isn’t actually anywhere to be found in the paper, but maybe it’ll be out tomorrow. I really don’t know what’s going on there. But hey! I’m on the cover of the newspaper!
I was invited to the 9:00 meeting that the director of my department holds on Mondays. I was invited to this meeting once before and it turned out well, but it’s always a little scary being invited to a meeting with the “big dogs.” This meeting turned out well for me again – I was given an award for my hard work on my projects lately. There are three levels of awards: bronze, silver, and gold. Bronze awards come with a set of free tickets to a movie theatre in Savannah. (Not terribly useful to us since it’s about an hour away from home. I have four of those tickets in my purse right now.) Silver awards come with a $50 voucher to the Wal-Mart close to the company grounds. (And it really only works at that specific Wal-Mart.) And Gold awards come with a $300 bonus check.
I was awarded a Silver award at the meeting. $50 to spend at Wal-Mart! It’s pretty exciting.
As a side-note, I received a Bronze award in January and again in February. I was thinking I’d work on a trend and see if I could get one every month of the year. (Who deserves a promotion? I do!) 
I didn’t get on in March, but I figure getting a Silver award makes up for both March and April. Don’cha think?
On my way back to my desk from the meeting, I passed my lead. (Or co-lead? I’m not totally sure where he fits on the current chain-of-command, actually.) He took a double-take and said, “Kylene, you’re shrinking! Is that from Zumba? I almost didn’t recognize you!” It made me laugh, especially because he had to back-track and explain that he meant it in a good way and not at all badly . . . he’s very concerned about being proper to women in the workplace. I have no idea what I’m doing differently from Friday when he saw me last, but made me feel really nice.
By the way, the scale on Saturday said I weighed 213.5 pounds, with shoes on. That’s down 3 pounds from last week and about 19 pounds from my starting weight. And I’m on day 29 of logging my food in a row! If I can make it all the way through today and tomorrow (and really, why wouldn’t I?) then I can call and schedule my massage. How awesome is that?!
But I’ve run up to the end of my lunch hour so I’ve got to go ahead and post this. I hope you’re all having a fantastic Easter Monday!