January 8. Sunday Night.

Hi Journey.

Tea Time tomorrow; I'm not very worried, actually not feeling anxious at all. All stocked up on drinks and snacks. About half of the larder is imported; makes a woman feel a bit special to drink a tea from England or a cookie (oops—biscuit) from Australia. Plus it's a great icebreaker, although I'm operating at the same temperature as most of these ladies. We've been reviewing progress with clients long enough I actually look forward to every session.

OK, J, most of them. I've a few clients that I spend the bulk of the hour willing myself not to look at my watch. Tea Time does mean longer days, though. No cramming in paperwork during the daytime. Plus, leaving for SF in three weeks, so that means an extra few days at end of the month without any calls to new clients. That means a revenue hit that'll show up in Q2.

But, if Dana and Viv keep pace with their current workload we should have plenty of new opportunities.

Maybe I do re-arrange my silverware a bit much; although I hate to admit Todd LeBrand was right.

I treated myself to a light lunch at Chat Noir Friday. I was working through possible furniture layouts for Lauren Griclow's ranch out in Pinehurst. She wants us to revamp her Living Room. Her house is just old enough that a separate Family Room was never a part of the floor plan, and nobody thought to add one on. She has three teens, and they are doing a bang-up job of tearing up her current space. It's a large room with a scrumptious bay window, but now it's just completely overloaded on one side with an obese leather couch and recliner. I'm tempted to overcompensate, and go with a sparse divan and maybe a teak steamer chair or two and leave the rest of the space sparse and stark, almost barren. If I wander down that route we'll have to fill in with several plants and loads of nice, white light.

Of course, Shelly still needs to drive out and visit, before I wash out whatever furniture we decide to recommend with too many lumens.

I spied a lady gawking at me during lunch. Pretty obvious that she was checking out moi, since she had to twist halfway around in her chair to see who it was the older lady sitting across from her was nodding her head toward. The moment her eyes grazed across mine she blushed a tad and whipped back around to her conversation and coffee.

I looked down at the table in front of me. Not only had I used my own place setting of flatware, but I'd borrowed the set across from me. I admit I must have seemed a bit odd as I sat there, re-arranging flatware faux-furniture in my mind's-eye view of a ranch house six miles away.

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