Where were you today? Did you go shopping? It was intriguing that the stores were open from 12 midnight this morning to 12 midnight tonight. Some stores opened at 2 am, others opened at 5 am and still others opened at 8 am. What a day to go shopping!

I thought about going but then the thought of all the crowds shyed me away. (I was also not feeling well and the thought of walking around getting pushed and shoved didn’t really thrill me.)

But it did look like there were bargains. Did you find any?

When I got home from running some errands, I got an alert from Newsday.com that an employee at Walmart at the Green Acres Mall on Long Island was killed when the crowd got out of control and pushed him down. A woman on their web site is being interviewed as saying, “this is supposed to be fun and it’s not!”

Could you believe this happened? Here we are in an economic downturn so the bargains should stick around a while, no? And what kind of bargains did they really have? Was it worth someone’s life to get those bargains?

What a tragedy! It’s sad that a fun day off from work to go holiday shopping had to end this way.

Last night at the Islander’s game, there was a statistic on the billboard that read, “91% of all Americans eat turkey on Thanksgiving.” It also said that the “average Thanksgiving meal was 3,000 calories!” Wow, I couldn’t believe it!

Today is Thanksgiving. My family and I went to my mother in laws house for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Twenty three people were there, all relatives and friends. We’ve been going to her house for Thanksgiving for years and every year, she puts out her beautiful china with her sterling silver cutlery and in the middle of the table sits my niece’s sculpture of Thanksgiving. She made this sculpture when she was five.

The thing about Thanksgiving, besides eating turkey and thinking about when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, is that it is a perfect time to reflect what you are grateful for. Here’s my list…. I am grateful for:

1. My entire family for being there
2. My staff for understanding my leadership decisions and being there when the clients need them
3. My clients who are amazing people and have interesting stories for us to tell
4. My media contacts for listening to my staff and I when we have an interesting story
5. My vendors for giving us good deals for our clients
6. My prospects for giving us the opportunity to present a plan
7. My business friends for giving us referrals and for enjoying their company
8. My charities that I am involved in
9. My friends in the virtual world and in real life for putting a smile on my face
10. Nature – the sun, the moon, the stars, the ocean and the beach
11. Turkey on Thanksgiving… Have a happy and healthy Thanksgiving!

Usually the three days prior to Thanksgiving are generally quiet days. But the last three days were very busy. Besides having a meeting with a former client and old friend at Bruce’s in Great Neck this morning and then bumping into another business friend there, I hurried back to the office to meet a prospect and to show him some of our work. The rest of the day was filled with phone calls and answering emails, text messages and Facebook/Twitter messages.

At around 5:45 pm, I get a call from my son, “Mommy, can you take me to the Islander’s game tonight? Aunt Lori has tickets that she doesn’t want to use and I really want to go.”

How could I say “no?”

So, my sister, Lori’s daughter, Jessica dropped off the tickets at around 6:15 pm and I speed home as fast as I could within the speed limits. When I got to the house, I put on a pair of jeans, my new “Ugg” boots, got my son ready and we were off. We were back in the car to the Nassau Colliseum.

My son turned to me and said, “thank you mom for taking me to the game!” I grinned and thought it was all worth it!

We got to the game about 10 minutes late. We parked the car far from the door and walked quickly inside the coliseum. (It was freezing outside!) We were both hungry so we stopped at the Nathan’s stand, bought a few hot dogs and while we were standing there, noticed that there were a bunch of people dressed in outrageous costumes. One guy was a big banana, another guy was clown and yet another guy was dressed as Sparkey, the Islander’s mascot.

Being my first time at the game, I shook my head, looked at my son and walked to our seats. After the second third, Sparkey was back by our seats. He was dancing in the isle with one of the ice breakers. I noticed a camera and interestingly the man behind us won a dinner for two at the Fox Hollow in Woodbury.

And what about the game? The Islander’s were winning up until the last third when they lost 5 to 3!

This post is entitled “On Traffic” since I feel like I’m in traffic most of the time! Traffic is different depending on where you live. The traffic in Manhattan is different than the traffic in say, Dallas, TX or Boulder, CO. When you live in New York, especially Long Island, you know what it’s like to sit in traffic for hours at a standstill. Sometimes, you even feel like you’re in a parking lot and could walk faster.

At HJMT, we have three offices — Manhattan, Westbury and Rochester, so I travel often. Today, I was traveling into the City. My first stop was the Queens Museum of Art, where I am an affiliate Board Member. A friend of mine is on the Board and he told me that the museum could use my help, so I met up with some folks there in the spring. They took me on a tour and I was so impressed that I wanted to get involved.

This was my first time at the Queens Museum of Art and I saw some neat stuff that I had never seen before, like the Panorama of NYC, set in a gymnasium type room with the entire city laid out to scale with bridges, tunnels and even active airports. Apparently, it was used in the World’s Fair in 1964 and they kept it in great shape. It was originally built by Robert Moses. The Panorama is a 9,335 square foot model of every single building constructed before 1992 in all five boroughs. There are a total of 895,000 individual structures. It’s incredible and definitely worth seeing!

The last time I toured the facility, the Pepsi Challenge was on display. It was interesting to learn that Coke catered to white Anglo Saxon Americans while Pepsi took the more diverse route. Today, there were dozens of school children ranging from 8 to 13 looking at Tiffany glass, that was originally made in Queens. They were also doing art projects and taking tours. There was a lot of going on!

The Queens Museum of Art is a great place to go because they have very different exhibits than the Manhattan Art Museum counterparts. The only bad thing about going to the museum today was that there was an enormous amount of traffic. It took more than an hour to get from my house in Long Beach to Garden City! I left at 8 am and got to the Museum at 10 am! On normal days, from my house in Long Beach to the Queens Museum of Art only takes about 40 minutes.

Getting back to traffic, I think you just have to zone out and not think about it, because otherwise you will certainly pull out your hair! Driving into the city from the Museum wasn’t that bad, it still took plenty of time because of the rain. I was a little nervous that I would miss my 12:30 pm appointment in midtown but as I was getting close to the midtown tunnel, I got a call from my office saying that my 12:30 needed to reschedule. I had a sigh of relief. Well, at least I could take my time getting in, I thought.

It was certainly a busy day. When I finally arrived in Manhattan, between proofing activity reports for all of our clients, preparing for our 3 pm new business meeting, answering questions from the staff, and writing a letter to a potential client, I felt like I was juggling a lot!

At around 7:30 pm, Allie and I headed home. We figured that there would be no traffic at that point. To our surprise, there was a ton of traffic — bumper to bumper traffic! I was feeling really frustrated at that point. I just wanted to get home. I tried to calm myself down by listening to Satellite Radio, which helped but it still wasn’t fun…

I started to think about Robert Moses and how he built all of these roadways through Long Island. I started to think that someone should have come up with a plan to handle more traffic by making roadways on top of each other, almost like a double decker bus or train. There’s got to be a better way to handle all this congestion. And I don’t think that imposing another tax on drivers is going to help. I also started to think about those commuters who drive in every day. How can they stay calm and relaxed when driving is so hectic!

I love driving. I would much rather take the car then the train into the city. Luckily, I only go into the city twice a week. So for twice or even three times a week, I could try to “zone out” and be like every other commuter!

Afraid the economy will impact your business? Nervous about a disaster? Having problems with your personal life? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then you should have been at the EO (Entrepreneurs Organization) seminar given by motivational speaker, Mark Moses at the Scholastic Building in SOHO last week.

Mark’s presentation was terrific! He spoke with a group of nearly 200 entrepreneurs from EONYC, EO Canada and Inc Magazine subscribers. The best part of his presentation was 25 tips on leading in turbulent times. I was so impressed, I wanted to share this with you….

1. Communicate regularly with your team.
2. Step away and take time to think.
3. Cut early and cut deep.
4. Stay close to key relationships.
5. Remember that cash is not cash until it’s cash.
6. Examine expenses and cut.
7. Entice staff to do more with less.
8. Use technology to drive down costs.
9. Negotiate better pricing.
10. Measure everything.
11. Watch your key indicators.
12. Eliminate unproductive people.
13. Invest in training to improve skills.
14. Try to sell more to existing clients.
15. Offer incentives for new relationships.
16. Go to industry conferences and visit competitors.
17. Don’t slash marketing and PR budget – keep it going strong!
18. Remember that there is opportunity in adversity.
19. Have key people challenge your assumptions.
20. Don’t get caught up in things you can’t control.
21. Keep your attitude positive.
22. Take care of yourself and exercise!
23. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
24. Don’t panic – Stay steady.
25. Make it fun… Remember your corporate culture.

The day after this seminar, Mark Moses was invited to breakfast with the EO Board for an intimate gathering of some of the concepts he introduced the night before.

Here is a photo of the EO board along with Mark Moses.

If you ever have an opportunity to hear a real motivational speaker, call Mark Moses or visit his web site at www.markmoses.net.