Weekend Update

The majority of my day yesterday was spent at Macy's so today's update really includes the weekend and my first day of work.

As I mentioned before, my family visited my cousin Kelly and her husband Lou on Saturday in celebration of Kelly's pregnancy and Lou's American citizenship. On the drive up to Santa Barbara, we came across a minivan that had "Welcome Home Sgt. Nick" written on the rear window. As we got closer, the side of the van said that the sargeant was returning home after his second tour in Iraq. We honked and gave our thumbs up and the young sargeant waved back and smiled with gratitude. I've said this before and I will say it again: we may not all agree with the war, but our men and women fighting for our country deserve all the recognition they can get, even if it's just a honk and a wave.

When we got to my cousin's house and we decided to eat at "The Cajun Kitchen" in downtown, my youngest brother, who is in eighth grade, wanted to interview Lou about the citizenship process in order to get some extra credit for his social studies class. I never would have expected, but the process is quite daunting. But according to Lou, it's well worth the money and wait. Lou also said that on the day he became a citizen, more than 3,500 people became citizens. Nearly 25 of those people, he said, have served in our military, a fact that brought the whole room to a standing ovation.

In honor of his citizenship, my parents bought Lou an American flag to hang outside his home and to be honest, I've never seen somebody so proud of owning an American flag. We are very proud of Lou and it's because of people like him that make this country the melting pot it is.

Moving on to my first day at work. It was, well...interesting. Although I had a headache from all of the perfume being sprayed throughout the day, the day went well overall. I learned real quick that I need to learn Spanish as I couldn't close numerous sales due to language barriers. I also learned that you can't trust anyone. Let me explain: one of our vendors was helping a customer and while she had stepped away to retrieve a product for him, he walked away, with a full bottle of perfume in hand. Granted, it was the tester, but it was full and now the company has to eat the cost. I guess I just don't understand why people steal, which is why the whole situation was so frustrating.

I also got to experience what it's like to clean up perfume after its been dropped and shattered. Thank God it was Dolce & Gabbana's Light Blue that broke and not Guerlain's Shalimar - Light Blue is much easier to cope with throughout the day!

~Brooke