Little did I know there was something better out there. Something in the form of… this:

"The Pit" -photo by Scott Porter

GCG-ers now have it all in our new office on West 7th Street, from our lovely kitchen, to our office kegerator, to our comfy chairs. Our office is the entire floor of the building and we’re surrounded by all the cool places to eat lunch. We have a war room for little meetings and a conference room for big meetings. We have working air conditioning. In fact, it works so well that most of us (well, the girls) have fuzzy blankets at our desks.

Now you may be thinking, “Yes, well, this office cannot be the office of all offices because everyone does not have an OFFICE.”

I admit that many of us were skeptical at first about giving up our own rooms. But this half walled-cubicle set-up has boosted synergy and communication. Plus, each space comes with this:

"Guest Accommodations" -photo by Scott Porter

A friendly cushion for placing one’s haunches when you’re talking to your office mate. How nice.

Of course, as the lowly intern, I have been at GCG for the second-least amount of time. The impressiveness of this office likely doesn’t mean nearly as much to me as it does to a few other employees around here.

“When I first started at GCG on the West Freeway, I had no window.

When we moved 20 years ago to Summit Ave., I got a window. A really big window with a view of the West Freeway.

In my new office on West 7th, I not only have a window, I also have a glass wall at the front of my office with a view of the beautiful open area where amazing people fuel the creative engine that is GCG.

In some ways, it’s still like the freeway. The GCG folks I see every day know where they are going, and they exceed the speed limit fairly frequently. If traffic is backed up, they know how to go around. If they get into trouble, somebody quickly shows up to help. And fortunately, they don’t collide with each other nearly as often.

It’s a great view.”

-Becky Johnson
Medical Education Director
GCG Healthcare
GCG-er for 25 years

“The other day I drove down Greenleaf, the little street where my first GCG office was located and where I began working right out of school. On that day, I saw that the old building had been completely demolished, and the wave of nostalgia I felt made me sad. You see, I like to hold onto things. (I still have my first office calculator and the old typewriter I used before we got computers.)

I absolutely love everything about our new office on West 7^th St., which happens to be only a few blocks from Greenleaf. We haven’t come far in distance, but in so many other ways we are light years down the road from where we started.”

-Dede Echols
Accounting Director
GCG-er for 27 years

“I’ve been here long enough to see three new offices and this one is by far the best. One of the best things about our new office is that it looks like a creative office and feels like a creative office. Visually, it’s much more powerful and it creates a lot of positive energy, which is also reflected in our team. When I first walked into our new space, I felt like it was in a thriving design district in L.A. or Miami.”

-Brian Wilburn
Senior Art Director
GCG-er for 24 years

So we’re kicking off a new year in new digs, and we’re extremely happy with our new space. From our desks with a view of Montgomery Plaza, we’ll continue to produce fantastic work in a little more inspirational environment.

We also went to a great pizza spot: Da Baffetto.

We really loved the sticker on the front door – even the Italians love Texas!

Our next stop was Siena, which is a beautiful place that is kind of unknown to many travelers. It was quiet, which was perfect for us after being in the bustling city of Rome.

One of our favorite experiences in Siena was visiting the Duomo, one of the most beautiful, intricately built cathedrals I have seen. I think the pictures can explain much better than I can!

Last, but definitely not least, was Florence. This beautiful city includes the Piazza della Signoria, the Uffizi and the Galleria dell’Academia, which is home to Michelangelo’s David. People waiting to see David stood in a line that stretched around the entire building. Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take pictures of the famous statue, but we did get some pretty photos of places around Florence.

Cooking has always been a tradition in my family. We eat together, pray together and fight for the last buttermilk biscuit. My dad used to say, “We always cook for a gang of folks because our food attracts a gang of folks.” He would rather cook too much than too little. My family and I grew up with very little, but my dad would hide it well. He often said, “If we have eggs, milk, flour and butter, we can eat like kings.”

My family taught me how to make everything from scratch, so I could see where the finished masterpiece came from. My grandmother would mix in some words of wisdom along with the ingredients, like “It is not so much where you came from but how you turn out that matters.”

‘Tis the season to be thankful for your family and enjoy every moment you are able to spend with them. Unfortunately, my family is out of state and my grandmother has passed, but that has never stopped me from keeping the kitchen working overtime. I roll up my sleeves and whip up a batch of milk gravy and biscuits and I’m right back in that precious woman’s kitchen. The holidays remind me to slow down, savor the warmth of family, and – oh, yes – take a little pride in what comes out of my kitchen.

I grew up surrounded by dirt and sticks … and pigs and old trucks and barbed wire fences and open pasture. At the time I just wanted to get out of Small Town, Texas. But now, some time in the country is the perfect remedy to a deadline-driven, traffic-jammed, prepackaged-groceries life in the big city.

My husband, Scooter, and I knew we were getting close when we ran over a skunk just before the turnoff to County Road 402. Febreeze can’t touch skunk musk, I’m just sayin’.

There wasn’t much on the agenda for the weekend, aside from a few early-morning garage sales and stocking up on firewood to bring back to our big city fireplace.

With Dad driving us around in his Chevy, we searched for mesquite – “It’ll keep you warmer than oak,” he says. I had to continue to knock on the back glass, letting Mom and Scooter know, as they sat on the tailgate, to duck because low branches were coming. We also found, and dug up, a few small cedar trees to bring back for our front entryway.

Dad pointed out the wild pig wallow, the deer rubs and the place he had spotted the biggest bobcat he’d ever seen the week before. We stopped at the pigpen – “That’s Peewee, he’s the runt,” Mom says.

All that running around got us hungry. What was for lunch? Brisket and pork butt that Dad had spent the entire day before cooking on his pit, and Mom’s homemade mustard potato salad. And what was for dinner that night and then lunch and dinner the next day? Well, brisket, pork butt and potato salad, of course. What else is there?

Car loaded with cedars, firewood, mason jars of homemade salsa and the pork butt bone for the dogs to enjoy later, it was time to leave. Time to cross two cattle guards, two creeks, head down the caliche road and back to the highway toward the big city where you hear fewer “yes ma’ams” and more car horns.

As I sit here writing, listening to my “Grandpa Lee” Pandora station, a station made of up of songs by Conway Twitty, Johnny Cash and Red Sovine, I’m inspired to hold on to that part of who I am. So I’m back in the big city with a bit more fresh air in my lungs, a few more bug bites than I’m used to and a clearer perspective of my roots … roots still surrounded by dirt and sticks.

“It’s like a new pair of underwear: at first it’s constrictive, then it becomes a part of you!”

GCG has moved. Some 19 years after occupying our Summit Avenue office building, we packed up and moved about a mile down the road to our new space on West Seventh Street. It was… interesting going through nearly two decades’ worth of accumulated paper, files, ad samples and miscellaneous junk, deciding what to keep and what to toss.

But now, with the dust settling and everyone wiggling fresh butt grooves into their new chairs, we can breath a sigh of satisfaction, glad to finally be in our new space. Sparkling clean and made to order, we can be proud to entertain visitors for the first time since the Bosnian war. It will, however, take some getting used to, especially for the handful of GCG-ers who were here for the last move.

In early 2012, we’ll be throwing a full-on office-warming party, so those of you within travelling distance can come see the place and help us put our new kegerator through its paces. For now, we’re unpacking with one hand and marketing with the other.

With the first day almost done and the orange crates mostly empty, things are looking pretty good if not completely finished yet. We’re excited to get to show you the new digs, so stay tuned.