Just Me - 2/16 - esther fox [DOT] com

#reverb12 day one: i’m surrendering

Posted on December 1, 2012 by phillynikongal • 2 Comments

#reverb12 December 1: How Are You Starting?

How are you starting this last month of 2012?

Take a moment, close your eyes, take a deep breath and ask yourself the question: how do you feel…

… in your body? in your mind? in your day job? in your creative life? in your heart?

I’m done. I’m surrendering. The white flag is up and I am throwing in the towel.

But this has nothing to do with what you might think.

Alongside the previous post about emotional eating, I am trying to start December with a new outlook about food. I recently joined a six week project put on by Lindsay over at The Lean Green Bean and Elle over at Nutritionella called Elf 4 Health.

As an Elf, you are expected to support your assigned buddy with their holiday health goals and the daily challenges. Elves & buddies will be reassigned every 2 weeks. You are only asked to email your buddy 2 times per week:

Monday: Send your buddy an email to help them with the challenges for that week. Ideas of things to include/attach: your own personal tips & tricks, inspiring words and/or images, a new, healthy recipe or workout to try.

Thursday – Saturday: Any time during these days, check in withy you buddy! For example, ask them if they tried a new recipe, workout, or had fun with any certain challenges. Feel free to tell them how you did with your challenges, too!

I am using Elf 4 Health as a jump start to what would normally be my New Year’s resolutions. I don’t want to be a “resolutionist” (as my friend Lisa at 110pounds.com calls it) again this year. I probably say that every year, but I think this year is different.

So I am starting this December with a new frame of mind when it comes to my health. I’m 26, I’m a blob, and I eat my emotions. And the sad thing is that I’ve yet to have that quintessential “wake up call” given to me by a doctor about my weight. Not that I am necessarily waiting for that to happen. All I’m saying is that, well, it has yet to come up in conversation.

This past week, I did something I hadn’t done in about two years. A wall sit. If you don’t know what that is, see this page. It burned so much, but it was a good fantastic burn, and I felt it for two days afterwards. Granted, I can’t do any more than 10 seconds right now, but like everything in life, practice makes perfect.

In addition to that, Mr. Fox and I are starting into a clean-eating regimen. Which means no processed foods and more real foods.

You know, it’s a process. I know it will take a while, but I am willing to go really slow, rather than doing some fad that won’t end up being sustainable.

I’m looking for a brighter, healthier December, and an equally bright and healthy 2013.

This December, in addition to participating in #projectreflect12, I am also participating in #reverb12 over at I Saw You Dancing.

starting december 2012 reverb12 life health goals holiday

Filed Under: #reverb12, Just Me

My Life in Numbers

Posted on November 30, 2012 by phillynikongal • 0 Comments

When I started to get people signing up for #projectreflect12, a gal named Devon signed up her blog You Had Me at Neurotic. Her most recent post got me thinking, so I decided to be a bit of a copy cat.

0 – kids I have with Mr. Fox

26 – the number of years I’ve been on this earth

10 – the number of cities I’ve lived in during my lifetime (East Windsor, NJ; Las Vegas, NV; Henderson, NV; Carmel, IN; Lafayette Hill, PA; Peoria, AZ; Phoenix, AZ; Surprise, AZ; Indianapolis, IN, and Philadelphia, PA)

2004 – the year I graduated high school

9 – the number of schools I attended before college (two elementary school, four junior high schools, two high schools and one vocational school)

2 – the number of colleges I’ve attended to date

4 – the number of universities I’ve been accepted to but couldn’t bring myself to attend, let alone afford

6 – the number of times I’ve changed my major in college (in order: architecture, graphic design, pharmacy tech, business administration, photography, web development [current])

2 – the number of times I’ve been married and divorced

3 – the number of years I’ve been happily married to Mr. Fox

4 – the number of cats we have

1 – the number of times I’ve truly been in love

8 – the number of cars I’ve owned since getting my license at 18

9 – the number of hours I spend on the computer on a daily basis

15 – the number of minutes I spend in the shower

4 – the number of blog URLs I’ve owned and actually blogged on (fotograficrhyme.com, thefoxtrot.net, indynikongal.com and estherfox.com)

811 – the number of photos I’ve taken on Instagram

18,366 – the number of tweets I’ve made since joining Twitter in April 2010

1 – the number of cups of coffee I have on a daily basis (peppermint mocha Dunkin Donuts K-cup with vanilla Coffee Mate Natural Bliss creamer)

244 – the number of days I’ve been soda-free, as of this post

110 – the number of pounds I would like to lose

2122 – the number of songs in my iTunes Library

5 – the number of books I’ve read this year

7 – the number of hours of sleep I need to function

7:30 am – the time I *try* to wake up each morning

11:30 pm – the time I *try* to go to sleep each night

life numbers interesting things right now

Filed Under: Just Me

how to lose your customer base

Posted on August 20, 2012 by phillynikongal • 58 Comments

So, I had heard through the grapevine about a new BBQ joint that opened back in July in Bella Vista called Blue Belly BBQ. I love BBQ, so I was all set to tell Mr. Fox about it so we could go try it the next time we were out that way.

That is, until tonight, I happened upon a retweet from Mikey Ilagan of a tweet made by Allison Berger on Twitter, about a review she made on Blue Belly BBQ’s Yelp page earlier this evening.

Wanting to delve deeper into this, I took a look at the attached screen shot of what exactly Blue Belly BBQ tweeted, and was flabbergasted.

Conveniently enough, they pulled the tweet shortly after posting it, but obviously not before it hit the Twitterverse.

You would think that, seeing as this restaurant is in its “infancy” (in that they’ve only been open a few weeks), they would want to keep up a good rapport with their customer base, rather than choosing to get butthurt over a 3-star review on Yelp.

If it’s one thing I’ve learned in the few years I’ve been on Twitter, as well as the research I’ve done on brand management, you NEVER want to misrepresent your brand as a butthurt whiny twat on your business Twitter account. I mean, haven’t people learned? And then having the gall (although it got deleted) to talk shit about their customers on said Twitter page? AND THEN talk shit about them to other patrons?

I get the fact that Blue Belly just wants to vent, and that’s all fine and good. There are places to vent about customers anonymously that don’t affect your business, one of those being Not Always Right . But when you’re a brand new restaurant trying to gain traction in a big city like Philadelphia, you don’t want to trash talk your customers on your Twitter page, especially when your Twitter account is an extension of your brand, especially when you advertise the link to your Twitter account right on your homepage.

And here we have local ~~brewing company~~ patron, joining in on the ~~trash talk~~ commentary. Basically saying that Allison had no right to leave the review based on one experience. Well, I don’t know about all of you, but if I go to a place once and have a less-than-stellar experience, then hell yeah I’m going to leave a bad review (or write a review here or send it to Philly Phoodie) and not go back.

Defending a business owner’s right to vent? Like I said above, that’s perfectly fine to do WHEN YOU’RE NOT ON A PUBLIC FORUM USING A TWITTER ACCOUNT WITH YOUR BUSINESS NAME ON IT TO BUILD YOUR BRAND.

Edit as of Aug 20, 2012 – @MellodyBrewing wrote me an email this morning asking me to clarify that he is actually not a business, but someone that left the corporate world to follow a love of beer.

As it turns out, another negative review was left on their Yelp page a a few days ago, and Blue Belly decided to trash talk them as well. So it didn’t actually start with Allison’s review. It started with Jane T’s review.

Now, I know that I don’t have any pull here in Philly when it comes to local restaurants. But I would like to think that the small group of us on Twitter could spread something like this like wildfire. I know that I will never eat at Blue Belly BBQ because of this. I won’t even give them a chance, for fear that I be ridiculed on Twitter should I dislike the food and make a bad review about it. I guess I still find myself confused and flabbergasted at the fact that this business would even do something like this. I mean, really?

Please pass this around. I doubt they’ll apologize, but hey, who knows? Oh and, before anyone gets on here and defends Blue Belly, stop and think for a moment. If you were a freshly started business trying to build your brand, would you do something like this? I don’t think so. There’s venting, and there’s shooting yourself in the foot.

[hr]

As of 5:40PM EST on August 20, 2012, Eugene Giuffi, the owner of Blue Belly BBQ and Cochon, both admitted and apologized to Allison, in a public tweet on their timeline.

But of course this was not before he joined a thread on his business Facebook page. Although, that was after he deleted a half dozen or so comments.

Honestly though, regardless of the fact that Eugene made a public apology on twitter, he still made the tweet in the first place! And as many people tend to forget, Google remembers everything.

blue belly bbq butthurt bad customer service twitter

Filed Under: Esther Eats, Random Rants

feels like the first time

Posted on July 23, 2012 by phillynikongal • 0 Comments

No, that’s not a euphemism.

—

I was a “late bloomer” when it came to getting my driver’s license. I remember Ex # 1 attempting to teach me how to drive his ’88 Merkur stick-shift when I was 16, but I discovered just how much I lack the coordination required to drive a stick shift (why hello thar Mr. Clutch! Am I supposed to step on you now? *vehicle stalls*). So I didn’t get my license until we moved to Phoenix in 2004, after I turned 18. Basically, my parents decided that I needed to drive, so they got me driving lessons, and in August of 2004, I was licensed. My first car was an ’85 Mercury Cougar. When we bought it, it had 35,000 original miles on it, and I loved it (and believe me, I missed it when it was gone, but that’s another story for another day).

But I digress.

Having my own vehicle and a license to drive it was liberating for me. I was able to get places, which is typically the reason for having such things, yes? Of course. Well, you don’t really realize just how much you miss those things until you don’t have them anymore.

Before I left Phoenix for Indiana to live with Mr. Fox, I had given up the piece of crap Grand Marquis that Ex #2 talked me into buying (he was a cab driver, and he had wanted it to become a cab). So by the time Mr. Fox and I moved in together, we had no vehicle, and relied on the shitty public transportation system that is IndyGo in Indianapolis, in addition to the kindness of our landlord for grocery shopping outings. Needless to say, this became old FAST. Sometime later in 2008, we had the opportunity to “purchase” a janky ’85 Ford Ranger. It got us from A to B, and since Mr. Fox wasn’t licensed at the time, I was the only one driving it. Once that went to shit, we had the niceness of my parents who took us grocery shopping every couple weeks.

In September 2009, we purchased a used Chrysler Town and Country, which was wonderful. And it helped us out a lot when we moved to the apartment. Unfortunately, the transmission decided to go in March 2011, and we were without a vehicle again. Thankfully, we were still on a bus route, so it wasn’t *too* bad. One of our friends was gracious enough to gift us a 2000 Nissan Xterra (they were going to trade it in, but decided we were more deserving of it) in May 2011, and that worked well until it decided to start crapping out on us, so off to Carmax it went. During a brief existential crisis after the death of Mr. Fox’s father, we decided to take the proceeds of the Xterra and some other money we had and lay it down on a seemingly cute and harmless red 1999 VW Beetle. And thanks to a swindling car dealer and car repair shop, the Bug didn’t last very long. Note to self: do not drive over tall manhole covers in a car that has a 4″ clearance. You *will* tear your transmission pan.

I do have to thank the Town and Country though, because if it weren’t for it’s death, we wouldn’t have had the opportunity to rent the 2011 Kia Forte that we ultimately fell in love with. I also have to thank the Bug for dying as well, because if it hadn’t, we wouldn’t have been able to buy our 2010 Kia Forte.

driving philadelphia urban philly cars neighborhood kia forte

Well, I went on a tangent there, didn’t I? I had a point here somewhere…

Oh yes.

When Mr. Fox and I moved to Philly, I had only driven in Phoenix, Las Vegas and Indianapolis. In retrospect, those areas are not terribly urban. So when it came to driving in Philly, I was afraid. I mean, so afraid that I left all the driving to the husband. He lived there his whole life (minus 8 years), and he knew the area more than I. I had no problems driving in the suburbs, but our neighborhood is very congested and full of one-way streets, and don’t even get me started on the downtown area. So I could take Mr. Fox to work and drive around Horsham, Plymouth Meeting and the surrounding areas, but I was so afraid to drive in our own neighborhood, that I just *didn’t*. Also, our driveway behind the house is at a 45 degree angle, with a brick wall behind it. So I have to maneuver my way in and out of the driveway without hitting the wall or sliding into our garage door.

On our recent trip back to Indiana to visit my parents, I was happy to drive the entire time we were there. It felt wonderful to drive long distances again, and even seemingly insignificant trips to the store and gas station made me happy. Little did I know that, as soon as we would return back to Philly, Mr. Fox told me that I would be driving. I was like, say what?

Well hey, what do you know? I survived. I didn’t break the car, and I didn’t back into the brick wall, and I didn’t slide into the garage door. The only things I haven’t done yet is drive on Roosevelt Blvd, which is an experience in and of itself. I am weary of driving on the Blvd because of all the accidents that occur there. Eventually I will get there. Going to take baby steps though, because I don’t need to get us killed, you know?

So you’re probably wondering why this post is titled the way it is? Well, it’s simple. I had to get over my initial fears to be able to drive in our neighborhood, with all it’s obstacles, and it kinda feels like the first time I learned to drive.

I’ll get there eventually.

driving philadelphia urban philly cars neighborhood kia forte

Filed Under: Just Me, Random Rants

slumlord millionaire

Posted on July 19, 2012 by phillynikongal • 0 Comments

I was perusing my Twitter feed when I came upon an automated tweet by @Philly_Buzz.

philly buzz slumlord millionaire homeless foreclosure american dream

Click the photo for the article.

They blame one man – Robert Coyle, a man they call a “dream killer,” a “slumlord millionaire.”

philly buzz slumlord millionaire homeless foreclosure american dream

The word “slumlord” is what stuck out to me the most, in this instance.

Once upon a time, Mr. Fox and I were living in Indy with what we thought was our “American Dream”.

This “American Dream” consisted of a run-down house in a not-so-nice part of Indianapolis. It had a crack in the main sewer line, faulty wiring, was far from up to code, and it was over 100 years old. But it was our home. There was mold, and it was affecting my health.

The woman that sold it to us was a slumlord, in most senses of the word. She sold it to us under a conditional land contract “as-is” and advised us against getting a home inspection, telling us that it wouldn’t matter if we got one because she wouldn’t do any work to it before we bought it. So after almost two years, we broke the contract and found an apartment. And then she took us to court for money that she knew we didn’t have.

When I think about the hell that the people referenced in this article are going through, I think about our own struggle to find our “American Dream”. Granted, we weren’t on our way to being homeless because of the mistakes of our formidable slumlord, but we suffered monetary loss at her hands. Our stories don’t really compare, but the sentiment still exists. I just hope that the people involved are able to hold on to some semblance of what they had previously called home, instead of being put out on the streets because of the actions of some money-grubbing selfish asshole with nothing else better to do with his time other than ruin lives.

philly buzz slumlord millionaire homeless foreclosure american dream

Filed Under: Just Me, Random Rants

Get those posts!

Category Archives: Just Me

#reverb12 day one: i’m surrendering

starting december 2012 reverb12 life health goals holiday

My Life in Numbers

life numbers interesting things right now

how to lose your customer base

blue belly bbq butthurt bad customer service twitter

feels like the first time

driving philadelphia urban philly cars neighborhood kia forte

slumlord millionaire

philly buzz slumlord millionaire homeless foreclosure american dream