The Castle: NOT a restaurant

So...my company sent me to SC to help set up for the new Spring season. It was actually a lot more fun than I thought it would be. Drove up Monday morning, which was awesome because it was rainy here in Atlanta, and then almost as soon as I hit the state line, it suddenly cleared up and got really sunny and pretty outside.


Ghoti the traveling fish and Zeus the Moose (patron saint of my bad driving) accompanied me in the car, as always.

I wished I had been playing the license plate game (did anyone else play that during car rides as a kid?) because I saw plates from Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee (not surprising, since they're not that far away), and also New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Lousiana, Rhode Island, and California. So that was amusing. Also fun? Listening to my Sabrina the Teenage Witch soundtrack. Don't laugh - it's actually really great driving music, 'cause it's filled with semi-obscure mid-90s pop. And it was one of the few cassettes I had in my car - I couldn't listen to cds because my phone charger was using the adapter, and I couldn't find a radio station I liked. There was even a Phantom Planet song on there, from the first album, which was a big surprise. It totally made up for the Britney. Afterward, though, I turned the radio back on, and the first song I found was none other than "Baby Girl," performed by Georgia's own Sugarland (featuring Jennifer Nettles)! So that was awesome. I think I actually squealed aloud as I turned it up to sing along. It's always awesome to hear one of the your favorite local artists on the radio, especially when you're in a different state.


Ghoti in SC!


This is how you can tell we're not in GA anymore: Pepsi, Pepsi everywhere and not a Coke to drink. Sad.

The store I was sent to is in a mall, and it's also the biggest store in the Western Division. This place was huge. Like, 4x the size of my store in McDonough. A little bit intimidating. But the people were all really nice and I got to meet Farrah, who's one of the most awesome people ever.

One of the big projects Michael and I got to work on was turning two T-walls into Prep Rally shops (Prep Rally being one of our themes for this season). We started off painting the two walls a lovely shade of bright yellow:

The WALL OF DOOM! before (actually, after we painted it, but before we fixed it up)

And then added shelves, face-outs, lettering, clothes, etc:

My WOD! after


Michael's WOD! after

Our first full day, Farrah kept talking about how she wanted to take us to "the castle" to eat dinner one night. She said they had really great food, but it was somewhat expensive. I didn't mind, as work was reimbursing me for all food and gas expenses this trip. Michael and I mentioned to another visual, Joshua, that we were going to "the castle" one night, which earned us some very strange looks. Turns out, "The Castle" is a gay bar in the city, but "California Kitchen" (or something like that), which is shaped like a castle, is a restaurant down the street. We all had a good laugh at that.


Not THE Castle, just "the castle"

Our company spends thousands of dollars on very silly things. For instance, I regularly receive collateral for brands that my store does not even carry. This stuff gets thrown out, and is therefore a giant waste of money. They also spend gobs of money on stuff like this lamp, which I could probably make for $50:

The $5,000 grade-school arts-and-crafts project

And then there's this little mostrosity, that you couldn't pay me enough to even attempt:

The $6,000 hunting-lodge-decor-gone-horribly-wrong-yet-still-PETA-friendly-world's-ugliest-lamp