Today it was made official - I got a promotion! I am now a shift supervisor at my Starbucks! I’ve been with the company for nine months (as of yesterday), and now I am a member of the management team. Not bad for my first “real” job!

I am super excited about this. I love my job. Every good thing that you’ve heard about Starbucks as an employer is true. I get warm fuzzies when I think about my Starbucks family. And yes, this is cheesy and cliche, but I don’t care. I truly do love working for this company.

So yeah, that’s my big news for the day! Now off to go and enjoy a tasty beverage ;-)!

Last year I participated in Laura’s 30 Day Organizational Challenge and got my closet whipped into shape. I wasn’t one of the competition winners, but the amount of time and stress I’ve saved by having things organized has made me FEEL like a winner (OK, that was a little cheesy). Seriously, the challenge was in November, but that closet stayed in that EXACT condition until I moved in July, and when I moved I carried over the organization to my new apartment. And it’s still organized the same way (which is the REAL shocker). So this year, my project is even greater than last year’s - it’s a massive undertaking!

For this year’s 30 Day Organizational Challenge, I’m tackling my storage situation. A little background: I moved to a new apartment in July. For the first time I am living in an apartment all by myself, but it is a two bedroom apartment. I feel like I’ve got my own little house - this place TRULY feels like it’s mine! When I moved in, I got the kitchen all set up, the living room is all nice and homey, and my bedroom has everything just where I want it. The only problem? All that stuff that didn’t really have a place to go, so it got tossed into the spare bedroom/office (with a little overflow into the outside storage closet). And I just kind of . . . left it all there. 5 months ago. And about a month ago I went to my parents’ house and brought back all my Christmas decorations (Christmas at my place!!!) . . . and I just stuck them in the living room because there was no other place to put them.

So for my challenge, I am getting my storage situation all figured out! I’ve got a massive closet in the spare bedroom as well as a great storage closet outside by my little patio area. I’ve also got my desk which, once I get my computer actually set up, will provide great storage. And since I’ve already sorted through the rest of the apartment as I was putting things away from moving in, all the stuff in my apartment that could be purged is in that room - so not only am I anticipating using my storage space, but I’m also sensing a trip to Goodwill.

Here are a few before pics - I have more, but you’ll just have to wait until November 30 to see the whole process!

Patio Closet Before

Guest Room Closet Before

Guest Room Before

It’s time to get organizing!

Man it’s been busy!

On Thursday, Matt arrived right after lunch, so I now have both of my roommates - YAY! Then, around 7, my parents, brother, and the puppies arrived. Bo spent the night at my apartment that night, and Mama and Daddy went on to thier hotel.

On Friday, Bo left eaaaaarly to go to Elon and move in. He was super excited, though he would NEVER have showed it, LOL! They were busy moving him in all day, and I stayed at home and helped Matt get settled. And that night was a theatre party.

On Saturday, I drove to Elon to see Bo’s room and go to the family picnic. It was so crowded - parking was a nightmare. But he seems to have all of his stuff ready to go, and he’s gettng along fine with his roommate and suitemates. After that, all the parents were supposed to leave, so Mama and Daddy headed back to Winston-Salem to my apartment. Mama got to hang out with the puppies while Daddy and I had an accounting lesson (good thing about a father who is a CPA - he can help you with your homework for business school). After they left, we had a bunch of people over for the NASCAR race, we went to a concert, then we came back to watch Alien (which I had never seen). Phew.

On Sunday, Mama and Daddy came to pick up the puppies (:-() and then they left to go back to Florida. In the apartment, we cleaned some, and then we had a business meeting for something called IBO (more on that in another post). Next - homework. Boo. Then I fixed supper for everyone, which was delicious because we had zipper peas that Mama brought me :-)!!! And after that, we had a much-needed business meeting for MagicMouth, and we have so many cool things in the works for this year! It’s just super exciting!!!

So now I’m exhausted, and it’s Monday, LOL!!! Oh well . . .

Thirteen Things about LINDSEY

1. As you can see, I am back and ready to go! There was a bug in DirectAdmin, the software that the server uses, and it allowed hackers to manipulate anything running on PHP, especially WordPress. However, my host ROCKS, and in less than a week she had physically replaced the hard drive on the server, re-set up EVERYONE’S accounts, restored all the databases (in mint condition), and all websites were back up and running! She’s my favorite :-)!

2. As much as I hated the site being down, and as much as I missed blogging (I was gone less than a week, how pathetic am I?), it was probably good that I couldn’t blog. Last week we did an intense business simulation that absolutely consumed my week. I literally had time for NOTHING else. And that was supposed to be the easy week between sessions! I don’t know what they were thinking!

3. Speaking of . . . school is killing me. The further I get into this program, the harder and more intense it gets. I have NEVER had this much work for school. And it’s not easy work. Some of it makes sense . . . a lot doesn’t. I’m working hard to grasp the concepts, but there are SO MANY new ones that I feel like I’m lost. The schedule is crazy, the work is hard (and in high volume), and my brain doesn’t like to work this way.

4. One nice thing is I FINALLY have a roommate ;-)! Ben finally moved up here this past weekend, and it’s been really nice having him around. He’ll sit around and talk about artsy things with me, which apparently my brain is craving. It’s amazing how an intellectual conversation about something artistic makes my constant headache GO AWAY! Plus, Ben gives me hugs, which I was quite deficient on after a summer of living alone!

5. This sounds so trivial, but one of the things that has made school be so exhausting has been waking up MUCH earlier than I have been the past 4 years. I have to be up around 6AM and be sitting in the classroom ready to go for class at 8AM.

6. One of the things that has gotten me through those hard mornings is coffee! Yup, I was able to cross off #93 on my list of 101 in 1001 - I’ve switched from Diet Coke to black coffee in the mornings!

7. Another thing that gets me through the mornings - breakfast! When I was waking up at 11AM every day, it as easy to skip it, but now I eat it every day! Mark #18 off the list!

8. This past weekend (I didn’t have much homework) I was able to finish watching all the DVDs that I own. I had a couple of TV shows to go, but now I’m good! Cross #82 off!

9. As I posted in my post about backing up, I am now backing up both my websites and my hard drive regularly, knocking off #67 and #68 on my list!

10. Tomorrow my parents, brother, and cousin are all coming up here. And on Friday Bo (my brother) will be moving onto campus at Elon University, 45 minutes from my apartment. He’s growing up so fast, I can’t believe he’s starting college!

11. Along with all my family, the puppies are coming to visit! And since they’re all gonna be busy moving Bo in (and my parents will be staying in a hotel), the puppies get to live with me for the weekend! Woo hoo!!!! I’m so excited, they’re so adorable, and I miss them so much! They are Cavalier King Charles Spaniels - the black one (Tricolor) is Olive, and the tan one (Blenheim) is Ella :)!

12. After browsing around blogs yesterday, I found a post about FlyLady - and decided to join. We’ll see how it goes!

13. Before the crash I did a lot of blogroll checks for Thursday Thirteen, and now that I’m back, I’m gonna pick up where I left off! It was actually a lot of fun because I visited a lot of sites that were newer to the blogroll, so I hadn’t seen them before. But goodness, we’ve got a lot of participants now, LOL!

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