The Daily Krier

I enjoyed Christmas so much this year, because my older son is almost 3 and was totally into it.  He got so excited about each present, it was just adorable.  My younger son is 18 months so he wasn’t as fascinated as my older son.  Needless to say, the house is strewn with new toys and books, most of which is Cars-related.  The other really cool toy we got was a Wii with the Wii Fit from my parents.  I didn’t expect to be as into it as I have been.  Christmas Eve night we bowled, played archery, table tennis and sword fighting (ask my husband about the last one — LOL!).  It has really brought out my competitive streak!  And today I spent 45 minutes doing fun Wii Fit stuff — aerobics, hula hoop, yoga and strength training.  I love that it tracks your progress and stats in so many ways.  Too much fun!  I hope you had a fun and relaxing holiday as well.

It’s always fun this time of year to reflect on what has happened in the past and to think about what to accomplish looking forward.  Some people call the forward-looking exercise resolutions or goals, and pin their hopes on the “magic” surrounding the date of January 1.  Why wait until then to start something new?  As far as I’m concerned, right now is a good time to start. You get a head-start on those waiting until January 1, plus, you could be a third of the way through making your new resolutions or goals a habit.  Read the rest of this entry »

I’m normally not a last-minute shopper but this year the holidays kind of snuck up on me.  I’m usually done shopping right around Thanksgiving so the fact that it’s 5 days before Christmas and there were still gifts to be purchased was making me a little crazy.  We had about 5 gifts left and knew what we were going to purchase, it was just a matter of getting to the store. So this afternoon my husband went out and finished it up — what a guy!  Now all the presents are wrapped (just not under the tree — I’ve got 2 small boys, afterall!) and I’m feeling much better.  Why in the world am I not doing my shopping online?!!  Life would be so much easier!

I’m always amazed at people who blog daily.  It’s a huge commitment and while I keep saying I’m going to do it, a few days go by and I start feeling guilty about missing days.  I was catching up on reading one of my favorite blogs yesterday (Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist) and I was so inspired. It had been a while since I was there and I caught up on some recent posts, then revisted her guide to starting a blog.  She admits it’s hard to blog regularly even for those people for whom it seems so effortless.  I really admire her writing style — she’s so open and honest and seems to easily write about whatever it is that’s going on in her life at that moment.  I read that and wonder why I can’t do the same.  I worry about maintaining a balance between writing about marketing and personal topics.   I worry about this blog turning into too many personal topics and not enough “professional” topics (in other words, things that will help me make a name for myself and hopefully help me advance in my career).  I’ll admit, I have a tendency to worry too much about what others think and I’d be better off channeling those worries in ways that are more beneficial.  So maybe I’m worrying about all of that a little too much and I should take Penelope’s lead.  As she says, pick a topic and if it doesn’t work, then change it.

OK, let’s see where this blog goes…

I was driving to an appointment this afternoon when I turned a corner and what did I see?  Santa, driving in a white Cadillac!!  He looked like this, except with a less full beard.  Ho ho ho!

I had a surprisingly pleasant experience today when returning something to a local hardware store.  My husband and I had purchased 5 sets of white net lights for the bushes outside our front living room window. When putting them outside one of the sets didn’t work and, unfortunately, I had thrown the receipt away already. We went back to the store today to exchange them and, of course, they were sold out so we had to return them.  Expecting a hassle for not having the receipt, I was directed to a kiosk where I could look up my purchase history and print a replacement receipt.  Now that’s making it easy for the customer!

Anyone else grossed out by this?  It’s funny but disturbing all at the same time.  And the fact that the Handerpants ”distract enemies” must make them worth it!  I just wonder what would happen if they were worn with the 3 wolf moon t-shirt.  Mystical powers collide!

I love this time of year!  Saw “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” last week already and tonight was “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”.  Now that I have children they give me an excuse to watch these beloved specials.  My older son watched Rudolph but kind of drifted off to play with toys toward the end.  Not surprising as it’s an hour long but given he can sit through the entire “Cars” movie I figured he’d make it the entire hour.  Now put “Merry Madagascar” on and he’ll be glued to the tv!

Like many, many people out there, I was at the stores at 6 am looking for deals on the presents I need to buy for Christmas.   Thankfully I was home 3 hours later, although there are still many gifts on my list.  Just a short time ago I pulled up the Journal Sentinel site to read the news and noticed a brief post about the Kohls website being back up. Curious, I went to their Facebook fan page (as I’m a fan) and holy cow, there are a ton of irate customers out there!  Apparently their website has been down for most of the day so those people who were trying to take advantage of the “early-bird” specials were out of luck.  Post after post on their fan page consisted of complaints about their site being down, with only a handful of responses from Kohls.  Now I understand they probably had incredibly heavy traffic to their site and having just relaunched a site myself I k now all too well the problems that may be out of your control.  I’m not sure what the problem was with Kohls site but from the little communication I saw from them, it appears they could’ve done more to keep their fans and consumers updated.  I wonder how much revenue they lost out on today because people gave up?  It appears that there were some pretty persistent people out there who tried for hours to complete their transaction but how many more just gave up altogether?  I’ll be keeping my eye on this to see what, if anything, Kohls does to make amends to their consumers.  This could be a social media case study in the making!

I started seeing a new chiropractor a few weeks ago.  My lower back pain returned and I now have neck and shoulder pain as well.  I wasn’t very happy with the treatment provided by the last chiropractor I saw so I decided to try someone new and I have to say, I love this place!   Not only are they a state-of-the-art facility (how about viewing x-ray results immediately?) but they are giving away an i-pod as the prize for a patient referral contest.  Then, I went on their website the other day and it has (almost) everything a busy, working mom would hope for:  the ability to schedule appointments online; direct email to the doctor; the option to opt-in to their email communication as well as specify what topics you are interested in learning about; a 3-d spine simulator; what to expect at your first appointment; helpful articles; and more.  Plus, I’ve never had to wait more than 2 minutes to be seen.  For a small practice in New Berlin, I was impressed!  They are making it easy for me to be their patient which is how it should be.  Too bad more healthcare providers aren’t like them.