After the mortgage business imploded last year, Wall Street investment banks began searching for another big idea to make money. They think they may have found one….

Continue reading about the next great opportunity:

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Bird is the word lately. The theme of the day in the garden.

The intern has flown the coop.

The nest is empty. Or is it? After baby bird’s departure, I uncovered a golden egg, and it’s starting to crack.

Peace and prosperity to you!

JP’s post on the Twitter tool, blew me out of the water and totally validated my thoughts on using the application for my business. Over the past year I’ve watched the My Space come and go, Facebook is hot, and now Twitter. Meanwhile, I’m still clunking away trying to understand the blog concept.

And frankly folks, nobody wants to read about death and dying every word of every post, and Blawg knows, I can’t bear to write about it. Jet Packs’ laid it on the line:

And here’s where marketers fail: They don’t see the revenue stream. And here’s what they don’t want to hear: There is no revenue stream. Corporate blogs failed for the same reason. No one wants to write a company blog (and even fewer want to read it) that amounts to nothing more than spider food, especially when you have the comments feature disabled.

The blog has worked as spider food, and I’ll continue plunking away, trying to blend the life that I currently live: fitness in the morning, funeral in the afternoon.

OVERHEARD AT THE OFFICE:

Earlier this week I overheard a colleague in all seriousness, comment on an event being “ironical”.

THE END IS NEAR:

Despite feeling the end of year crunch, 2008 has been a bright year for Hall Enterprises. It gives me hope.

Earlier this year we had a few set-backs with ice and flooding and twisters at World Headquarters, and we are wrapping up the Urn Garden advertising experiment using the blog as a marketing tool. No facebook or twitter. No time.

I’m excited about the possibilities that word press offers, I’m grateful to have a technical adviser that will bail me out if needed. Now, it’s just finding the precious time.

On average, it takes me a couple of hours to write a post. It’s getting better, and it helps when I’m organized. A work in progress. I’m still unsure about mixing business and personal posts, although the personal posts seem to get more comments. Really though, it’s about the families we serve and the adventure of selling the product that no one want to buy.

We’ve in the middle of relocating the warehouse, which was one of the goals of 2008. This was our sixth move in four years. I see one more in the future.

We hit the projected sales goal for 2008.

The business paid for the intern’s education.

I Hate Bank of America: Paid off!

We made some headway on a side project that will launch in 2009.

On a personal note, I did learn that not only should you not discuss politics at work, you shouldn’t comment in the comfort of your own home. Just recently, I’ve realized the toll that the election took on my marriage.

All summer I looked for rainbows and unicorns, and while I never actually saw one….I’m told they will appear. It might be a few years.

Happy New Year!

Or the air conditioner.

It’s the morning rush in the hood and the teenagers are getting it sideways on their way to school. Who am I to talk, I was on the downhill slide last night and skidded right past my turn.

At least I didn’t bite the curb.

Lead-foot moved his car only to reveal another spin out. One of the neighbors stepped out wearing her pink cowgirl pajamas and started snapping pix.

Today’s tip for better living: Ease Off the Gas

Vintage Work Id

Continue tour of bankrupt office art and vintage id badges.

In 2002 I made a promise to myself that I would make the break from my employer before the next election rolled around. By April 2004 I was gone.

Recently, I read “The Garden of Agony”, an essay written in 1986 by Hunter S. Thompson, that perfectly describes that defining moment in 2002.

He works now as a political consultant in Washington, for $1000 a day, for either party or any candidate who can afford him. “Things are different now,” he told me last week. “The only thing that matters now is money. It’s so much worse than it was 10 years ago that you don’t even want to hear about it. This town is worse than it’s ever been. These new people have no shame. It’s like living in a whorehouse. I’m getting out.”

Then, one afternoon last last week, I got a call from my old friend Patrick Caddell, one of the ranking pollsters and wizards in the business, who stunned me by saying that he also was “quitting politics.”

“Don’t lie to me, Patrick, ” I said to him. “You were born in this business. It’s your life.”

“No more,” he replied. “The whole political system is a disaster area, and it’s getting worse. There are some very sick people in the business today. It has gone from the Best and Brightest to the Worst and Meanest. I got into politics because I believed in things; now I’m getting out for the same reason. It got so bad that I was feeling dirty all the time. I finally had a shower built into the office, but it didn’t do any good.”

Bookmark Tilly’s Story to read when you need to be inspired after a “bad day” at the office.

Smart girl, that Tilly.

Tilly’s Location: 59th Floor office, center of South Tower’s west side:

A horrific boom resounded throughout the office, so loud that it reminded me of a supersonic jet screaming right next to the window, only 10 times louder. The building shook so severely that I had to grab the desk to keep my footing! Instantly, I spun around and ran into my boss office to look out the window facing west into New Jersey. Stepping up on the air conditioning vent, I pressed my face and body against the window (not the smartest move, but it gave me a perspective on how severe the situation was). I saw monumental amounts of debris blowing by and raining down everywhere: chunks of burning metal, papers, desks — and bodies.

I could not believe what I was seeing.

Although we had a good evacuation procedure in place, I was not going to wait for it to be dictated to me. I grabbed my backpack, then a frightened Karen, and stressed in a loud, forceful manor laced with foul language (using everything in the book and then some!) that everyone needed to move now! I didn’t know at that moment what had occurred, but I knew that we were all in grave trouble, and that our best course of action was to be as close to the ground as we could go…

59 Flights of Stairs:

I like the way this girl thinks:

When we reached the 38th floor, the now controversial P.A. announcement was issued that we should either return to our floor or exit onto the floor where we were, but to stay in the building because the falling debris made it unsafe to be outside, and our South Tower was not yet secure. No one going down in the stairwell stopped…

It took me exactly 17 minutes to get down 59 flights of stairs because eventually it turned out to be the time difference between the two planes hitting each tower.

And that’s just a quick trip to the lobby…..

Definitely a story to be archived.

Today’s tip for better living: Layer your clothing.

Spotted at the gym:

Jack Lalanne

In order to offset the grim business of death and dying, I like to mix it up a couple of days with fitness in the morning, funeral in the afternoon. The fitness police job starts very early, and there’s a narrow window where there’s no trained medical personnel on staff*. Usually, on those days I’m operating on 3-4 hours of sleep, and I’ve had a premonition that with this early bird crowd, the “Door Rattlers”, that one of my silver foxes would over exert themselves.

Today it happened a little after 6 AM. One of the regulars strolled in half asleep and starting gettin’ sweaty on the stepmill. I saw him fall backward and heard his head thud. Luckily, we had a doctor in the house who also happened to be working out and took control.

The doctor revived him, our patient walked out on his own two feets and admitted he was straight out of bed, no food, no liquids. No good.

Today’s Fitness Tip: Avoid consuming cabbage and fried food before strenuous exercise.

*I am CPR certified and can shock your heart as well as fire a taser.