The world around us

Do you shop for yourself or for others in the holiday season? While most consumers are supposedly shopping for holiday gifts, it is actually that consumers are buying for themselves. According to a survey by the National Retail Federation, more than half of the shoppers surveyed reward themselves during their shopping.

Over half of the consumers surveyed said that they would be spending on themselves as well, mostly due to the galore of special sales available. On average, consumers will spend $107 on themselves, in addition to the $817 that they spend on gifts for others. Last year, consumers spent $99.22 on themselves.

A lot of shoppers see these special sales as an opportunity to put themselves first without feeling guilty. With lots of “buy one, get one free” deals, promotional gift cards etc it is a good way for consumers to spend something on themselves as well and feel good about making use of a special deal.

According to Karen A. Machleit, head of the marketing department at University of Cincinnati, “Shopping can be a stressful experience, and this allows shoppers to reward themselves or at least derive some pleasure from the experience. When you get a bonus, it seems more like a reward compared with a discount.”

In all the homes we saw when we were house hunting, there were a couple of really nice luxury homes, complete with the designer kitchen and bath and the requisite large windows. We decided not to take them as both were in really cut off locations, completely isolated since they were in a new part of town that was still coming up and had very few people living there as yet. I’m very happy with the home we eventually moved into, as it has a nice sense of warmth to it, thanks to lots of windows that let the sunlight stream in, and really tall ceilings that give a lovely feeling of spaciousness.

Here’s another gem of a comic from the fine folks at bLaugh.com, which is by far the best-est of the comics depicting bloggers, blogging and the internet. There are a lot of new cartoons about bloggers, some poking fun at bloggers, and others seeing the world from a bloggers perspective and this is where blaugh fits in. They do a really great job and understanding how bloggers think and coming up with some really glib ones.

I’ve always been a collector of some sort. At one time it used to be coins, then it was pressed flowers and postcards, but now its mostly art of any kind. I love graphic memorabilia, especially when it stands apart from the run of the mill kind of stuff. I spend time searching for interesting stuff to add to my collection and found that Millionaire Memorabilia has quite a collection of stuff that is both eclectic and classic.

I’m especially fond of old movie posters and found that there were lots of really rare ones available here, such as the poster for It’s a Wonderful Life. These have a wonderful quality to them that is completely absent in the newer movie posters and are really great collectible items. While most sites are limited to only one type of merchandise, Millionaire Memorabilia has a nice variety of items ranging from movies, sports, celebrity, game room, and even a Picasso and Dr Seuss water color drawing.

While not all collections are worth displaying, if you have a collection that comprises of the kind of items that they have, one must have a separate area for displaying them as well. Its no use to buy them and only keep them closed up in a box is there? They’re there to be admired and so they must be well displayed.

I’ve been posting more regularly for the past two weeks and have already seen an increase in the number of daily visits I get. So, if you want more traffic and want to build on readership then you must write more often, say about 4-5 short posts a day or 1-2 long posts a day, and hope to attract the kind of readers who are interested in what you have to say. While I write mostly about business, relating to retail news, consumer insight, shopping scoops and product reviews, I have written about travel and investments here as well. By far it is for shopping stuff and trends that most people visit my blog for and that gives me a good understanding of my readers.

There are lots of areas in the city, where you simply don’t get a strong enough cell phone signal and need a cell phone booster that will strengthen the signal. Thankfully, we do not face that problem and not had a problem with our cell phone signals at all. Unfortunately, we’ve not been quite as lucky with our cordless phone, which seems to have an unusually low range and starts to get choppy and wavy in the very next room. I’ve seem it happen to other people as well, but with different instruments, so wonder if it’s just coincidence or something that interferes with the signal.

Its been a really hectic day at work today. On the retail front, its a really exciting time, with Thanksgiving coming up in a few days and retailers fretting on how much consumers are willing to shop amidst a feeling of gloom in the economy. Another reason that retailers are worried, is that there is no must-have product this season that all consumers are rushing to buy.

Most retailers are opening up stores even earlier this year, Kohls and JC Penney opened at 5am last year and will be opening at 4am this year on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. A lot of retailers are not even waiting for Thanksgiving for the shopping to begin and held “Why Wait?” sales over the past Sunday. Macy’s, Best Buy and Circuit City were some of the companies that attracting customers with special offers for Thanksgiving.

A lot of people visit Las Vegas just for the weekend and end up liking the city so much that they want to live there. There seems to be some sort of magnetic attraction in the city that makes so many people want to look for Las Vegas homes for sale while there are there and change their jobs and lives to come and live in Las Vegas. Being a vacation spot, a gambling haven and lots else, the city does have an air of unabashed joy to it and if you’re in the construction industry then there are lots of jobs available in the city as well.

As a great number of people get into blogging, the entire concept of it is changing and evolving into a completely different thing. When I started out blogging in 2004 (on a different blog), it wasn’t mainstream and only those who were really curious about it (like me) got involved, besides all the tech geeks and IT people. I used my blog initially only as a place to write a sort of online dairy and review place. I would post reviews of movies and books I had seen and read, reviews of restaurants I have visited and most of all, write about places I had traveled to and wanted to travel to. Over time, I have differentiated my blogs and created niches for each of them, so as to not let them be too much of everything and much of nothing in particular.