I was almost ready to pack up and go home, and then..

This morning, after getting only a few hours of sleep last night, I woke up late, leaving myself just enough time to bike through the pouring rain and high winds up the hill to the hotel in time for breakfast.  Exhausted, soaked, and hungry I walked upstairs to the employee cafeteria, set down my things and went immediately to get some coffee...except there was no coffee. Just my luck. So, I grabbed some decaf just for the hell of it, and went and got my breakfast (the hotel's version of french toast...at least I think it's supposed to be french toast...) A few minutes after sitting down to eat, a woman walks up to me and says, "Hi. I just wanted to let you know that you have bike splatters all up your back from your bike. Your jacked caught most of it, but there's some on the dress too."

Fricken. Awesome.

I finished eating and went down to the bathroom to wash my dress and dry my still dripping hair, and then at 8 went into the office to begin my, oh yeah!, 12 hour shift.
So, coffee-less, wet from the rain, and still hungry from barely eating breakfast, I took a minute to ask God for strength to get me through the day, knowing it was probably going to be rough.
To my surprise, it was far from it. The phone calls I took were pretty uneventful, I didn't get yelled and once, and my boss gave me some extra, thankfully stress free, responsibilities.  Pretty much everyone in the office seemed to be in a good mood, and we spent most of the day cracking jokes and laughing. My favorite part of the day, however, started at 6pm when the phones went off. We all went up to get dinner for a half hour, and then stopped back down to chat with my friend who works at the news stand, and then back to work. But when it's after 6 pm...it's not really work anymore. See, after 6 PM, we're all in our element.  One of my good friends, a guy who works in my department, put on his "diva" pandora , and we spent the next hour and a half listening to the best of Whitney, Beyonce, Mariah Carey, and of course Aretha Franklin. Oh, Aretha. Yeah, about two measures before she went into the chorus of "Natural Woman" the girl who sits next to me let's out the LOUDEST burp...fitting, of course, that seconds later Aretha goes into "you make me feeeeel like a natural womaaaan."

Another awesome thing happened today! We had Christmas at the office! Well, kind of. There are 6 people in my department, and today 4 of us got packages in the mail. We all circled up and opened them together, it was very touching. My wonderful mama sent me my guitar in a box today! So happy to have it, now H and I can head down to the park to entertain some tourists.

So, I end by saying that I learned two things today. Number one: God listens. Number two: Don't lose hope in the end just because the beginning starts roughly.