Song of the moment - Merry Christmas

On Saturday and Sunday mornings Heath and I love to watch CMT. This past week we heard this wonderful music video. It is Rascal Flatts doing "I'll Be Home For Christmas" a capella. I listened to it three times in a row while driving the last ten miles in a bed of white snow to my parents home on Christmas eve. Merry Christmas!!

2008 in review

Heath and I have been engaged for exactly one year as of Sunday. And as of today we have five months left until the wedding. Yikes! I thought I would review our 2008 year of engagement. I still have a paper version of my calendar. I don't have a fancy blackberry or iPhone....yet ;) So let me flip back to January......ok, here we go!

January: I went to my first bridal show with Heath's mom. Our friends Flint and Theresa, and Sara and Mark came to visit us and we dragged them out in the snow to the wedding site.

February: I tried on my first wedding dress. We saw our friend Ben on the show Extreme Homemakeover (so awesome). Ross and Tawny (Heath's parents) moved to Kansas City!!

March: We went to go see the Bodies Revealed Exhibit. Heath turned 27.


April: We went house hunting for the first time. I went to Minnesota to see Theresa and we found my wedding dress at the Mall of America. KU won the Championship.


May: Went house shopping in Weston, MO and went to the wedding site exactly one year from the wedding.

June: Went to the Spooner Cabin with Trent and Megan in Council Grove, Kansas. Went to Dary's housewarming party. Booked our photographer for the wedding.

July: I went to go visit my brother in Virginia. I babysat Lucy a lot! Went to Mike's wedding in Colby.


August: We went to Mike and Kelly's shower. Heath and I celebrated five years together! Aaron and I pulled off a surprise visit to Iowa.

September: Our good friend Luke was in town so he and Dary and Heath got a little crazy. Uncle Greg came to town and entertained us for an evening.

October: I went to St. Louis to help Theresa with her frames. We went out on the town with Shi and Holly.

November: I voted in my first election. We put a bid on our first house.

December: Began the process of purchasing our first home. We completed the wedding website and sent out our Save The Dates.

I am sure I am missing some things but this is what is on my calendar. Have a Merry Christmas!!

Consumer Reports - MJ style

I am a firm believer in customer service. It is not a difficult trade as most of us know from experience. I have worked in many service industries including IT, the railroad, education, and consulting.

I am also a consumer. Sadly I understand that small town customer service is very different from big city customer service and the every-so-freightening global customer service. Those of us who have worked in customer service know that word of mouth travels faster when something negative happens. I believe the ratio is 10/1. I appreciate the word-of-mouth marketing theory and I support it. For this reason I will be posting any time I have a good or bad experience alike.

But for this post I have to do a little 2008 catch-up. I have two good and two bad experiences to share to keep it fair.

UPS - They have a decent online business account system, they have decent customer service, and their drivers/delivery people are awesome! This is most important since they are the face of the company. Specifically there was a time when I was in a pinch at work that I decided to forget trying to work with the 'other' service and go with trusty UPS. It was 6:45, the last pick-up in the good area of KC was at 7:00 and I was trying my hardest to get there in time. Otherwise it was to the East Bottoms for the 8:00 pick-up - YIKES!

So there I am balancing a HUGE box as I tryed to stumble across the downtown sidewalks in massive need of repair (welcome to Missouri) in my high heels. I was about to enter the parking garage to walk up the 7 flights of stairs to my car when that big brown truck came rolling down the street. This super nice UPS guy stoped right in front of me and came out with a big smile on his face and took my box. MADE MY DAY!

Fedex/Kinkos - Imagine the same situation only a month or so before. I first went to the Fedex/Kinkos in my building only to be ingored by three people working there and no other customers in sight for about 10 minutes. Then I had to go to the Plaza location to make the 7:00 drop off and was glared at by the Kinkos workers as well as the Fedex driver for getting there at 6:55. They did one of those dramatic glances at the clock to make sure they actually had to help me. ZERO customer service skills.

And their online business service is pathetic.

BUT in defense - I do really like their drivers, especially our good friend Jamie!

Lands' End - Great customer service. You call in, get through to someone right away, and they are VERY helpful and sweet and great follow-through. I like their catalogs, and their promotions, lots of good deals. Their products are decent, but they do run large.

Samsung - Horrible customer service and faulty products. I have a Samsung phone and have had the worst time with their accessories, I understand that this is a small portion of their overall products but regardless, it matters. So I had this specific accessory go bad on me twice, the first time Verizon just gave me a new one, the second time it seemed to be the adapter which I could only get from Samsung directly. So after I sat on the phone for 60 minutes and was transfered at least seven times the conclusion was that I could buy a new one for $13 (why would I do that? It is faulty!) or to send it back at my expense and wait for 6 weeks for a new one. I then asked if I could get 3 for the next 3 times it was going to go out on me and of course that was not an option. So I verified with the woman that every 6 months I would have to pay money to send it in and wait 6 weeks for a new one back. It didn't seem to matter when I told her that an easy fix for me was to never buy a Samsung product again. She said "I can understand why you would choose that". WHAT?!? Yes, I could have ordered this adapter through them but that takes 6 weeks to get anyhow even if I pay! You can only get them through the retailer if you buy the phone too. What an unnecessary mess. I will never buy a Samsung product again.

*BONUS*
Centerbeam - They are our outsourced IT company for my job. I have to call them all the time and it is hit or miss if they can actually help, but instead of focusing on that, I would like to focus on the fact that they GAVE me an 80 Gig Video iPod! Just for filling out a survey. I love them!! Yes, you can buy my customer service love.

I have three more but I think this is enough for now. But just as an FYI - Pitney Bowes is aweful, but its not like they have much competition. Hallmark Business Expressions has good intentions but really messed up on our Christmas card order for the office, and Shutterfly has very professional customer service for those of us that do not know what we are doing.

Does anyone have any to add??

Christmas Party -a-thon

My company Christmas party was this past Friday, and following was Heath's company Christmas party the following day on Saturday. We have been planning/dreading this for a month or so only because it is a little scary having them back to back. But things went just fine :)

Hay Group's Christmas party was in the new Power & Light district at the Bristol (YUM!). We played a fun round of Jeopardy which resulted in many many laughs. Our office has 15 employees and we are quite the dis'fun'ctional family.

Sadly, Heath and I suffered from headaches from the begining of the eveining so we were not as lively as usual. Here is an example :(

Umbrella Medical Systems had a themed Christmas party. The theme was "The Newlywed Game". So you can imagine how Heath and I 'stuck out' to be the only engaged/not wed couple there. But we actually made it to the finals!! (yes, I cheated)

Here is a picture of the Umbrella Medical Systems/Data File power group. Meet Bill, Janine, Heath, Me, Megan, and Trent.