This Is A Lot.
If one year of a dog’s life is really worth seven, then PJP is living on the same scale lately. I’m completely certain a million things worth discussing has happened in just the last few days, so let’s break it down:
On Friday, we went over to visit our bougie new HVAC at PJP Nifong and bask in the cool, brand new fresh air rolling out of the vents. And when we went back to PJP Buttonwood, we were greeted with a wall of heat. Although the air was set to 68, it was a balmy and fetid 86 degrees in the store. AWESOME. And it didn’t improve any on Saturday, prompting someone to leave me Square feedback that said “it was hot as HOLY HELL in your store on Saturday, but your employees were as chipper and friendly as ever!”. Preach. Thankfully, Reed Heating and Cooling stopped by this morning and followed my instructions to basically pray over the unit and put a bandaid on it to get us through to our move date. (Actually, they put a new compressor motor on it and replaced the filters. Same difference, right?)
Which is perfect because this afternoon, the camera crew from PBS returned to film the interviews with Jeanne and I that couldn’t be filmed on their last visit because of background noise. Since we excel at having hair and makeup done and talking about ourselves, this afternoon was a delight. And it was 100% improved by not sweating profusely for television posterity.
Gillian Tracey Design created us some swoon-worthy posters for PJP Buttonwood to announce our move and for PJP Nifong to announce our late summer arrival. I sent them to the printer this afternoon and hopefully they will be up by the end of the week. In an odd way, that makes this all seem more official than all the terror sweating I did over the lease negotiation and signing. Sounds right.
And speaking of Gillian, we visited with her on Friday to start some early thinking about PJP Nifong and menu boards and other signage, plus a complete redesign of the Pie Is Home card. It only reminded me that it is a straight up miracle that we ever survived the early days of PJP Buttonwood, when we had to clue what we were doing. Thank goodness for all of you that supported us, whether we had a menu board or not. Or actually, even a list of our pies available for review.
Finally, we are rolling up on some sad, sad, sad days over the next few weeks as we send long term Team PJP members off into the non-PJP world. Yesterday, we hosted a scavenger hunt and dinner for the entire crew. We even convinced Kevin, who left for Arkansas after graduation in December, to come back for the weekend. The whole experience is worthy of its own post, but until then, just know that we had more fun in one afternoon/evening than some people experience with their work team in an entire year. And for that, we are thankful.
