What am I doing in Arkansas?

Good question that I have asked myself several times today. Technically I am here to hire a manager for a store we are opening in a WalMart in Rogers Arkansas. Just getting here is a bit of a challenge. The closest decent size city is Fayetteville (sp?)...flights from Dallas to Fayatteville were retarded. $450+ with a layover. What?!? It is an hour flight...how do you have a layover? There is nothing between Dallas and Arkansas to layover to... Of course Southwest Airlines flies to Tulsa which is only 100 miles or so from Rogers so that is the way I ended up going...Flight was only $130 with no layover but I get the added joy of a 100 mile drive through OK. Nice. This is the city where Wal Mart's home office is located so the fact that we are building a Campero in the first Wal Mart ever is supposed to be some sort of big deal. I don't consider any failed business idea a big deal unless it drags a company into the abyss. This is a bad idea and it will not be successful but, hey, I just do what I am told. Luckily, it won't drag us anywhere near the abyss but I can't see how this failure will help my career. On the bright side, I could be wrong and this could be an awesome idea...Yea, unfortunately my track record predicating this stuff is usually pretty good. To shed some light on this lovely little berg, I ate at an all you can eat BBQ Rib place tonight...Have you ever heard of such a thing? The waitress actually told me not to order the $15 entree' I had asked for because they had the $10 all you can eat rib special...It was very nice of her but it doesn't make me think this area is crawling with upper middle class rib (or chicken) eaters. There are probably 30 restaurants within 4 miles on this street with at least 10 empty buildings that were restaurants that have closed...another great indication of a place we want to build our new restaurant. Anyway, I am very excited about the 18 (yes, I wrote 18) interviews I have tomorrow...I am sure I will be blown away by the quality of the candidates and general hygenie of this group. Fun, Fun. As you can tell, I am doing a fine job of maintaining a very positive attitude toward this whole venture...hooray, well done, me. BTW--Donna-- the trip we talked about around the 15th is not going to happen. Sorry about that...we will get out there someday soon. Take care all. ron