Groupon Fail

If you are not familiar with Groupon here is the quick and dirty of it. It is a website that offers deals from local businesses. The deal is usually 50% or more off a service or a certificate that needs to be purchased by a minimum number of people in order to be available.

This can be a great marketing tool for your business. The hope is that it will bring in a large number of new customers who are getting a great deal. Because of the deal and the terrific customer service they will recieve when they visit your establishment they will return.

As I mentioned it is really used as a marketing tool, so I find it kind of hilarious when something like this happens:


For those of you who might not have caught the mistake that I'm talking about the coupon is for "Half off UPSCALE Fare at Glengarry Inn in Fairport" and for anyone above the age of 21 pizza is not typically considered "Upscale fare".

This made me laugh out loud today. (And now I will probably be punished with my own HUGE mistake for laughing at this person). I'm really not sure how no one caught this mistake before it made its way out to the public.

To be fair, we all make mistakes and everyone is allowed a big one now and then. We all screw up and have to try to find a way to laugh at ourselves about it even if it takes a day, a month, or a year. Hopefully at some point you will laugh.

Fortunately at some point today someone caught the mistake and they did rectify it on the Groupon site:

The fact that someone caught this at some point and they made the change help restore some of my faith in Groupon, but if I had my own business it would still make me think twice before using the site to help me market myself.

No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes deserves to be called a scholar - Donald Foster (Professor of English at Vassar College)

Mark Twain was WAY ahead of his time

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint. - Mark Twain
If you take some time to think about it the original internet was the printing press and movable type. Johannes Gutenberg brought the written word to the masses. No longer was literature reserved for the rich. Without the printing press you may never have been forced to read the Adventures of Tom Sawyer in the fifth grade, and would have never been introduced to Mr. Samuel Clemens, the man who brought me the inspiration for this blog post.

Today the internet helps us reach people and spread ideas across the world. Sometimes for good and sometimes for not so good. It has brought us information that was previously much more difficult to get our hands on. And tools like WebMD have made it easy for each and every one of us to self-diagnose.

Though this tool could possibly save you some time and money from having to go to the doctor because what you really have is the common cold and not Ebola, typically this is not how it is used. By the time you have finished looking at the site you have diagnosed yourself with some rare form or bone cancer and you're convinced you are dying.

So please people, take Mark Twain's advice. For he was a man that was definitely ahead of his time.


And next time you self-diagnose yourself I hope you will think of this post and take a minute to laugh at yourself.

Learning to Laugh at Yourself

Learning to laugh at yourself takes a good amount of time. Typically it happens without you even realizing. It is often inspired by a combination of close friends and family, those who you feel the most comfortable around. Once you have learned to laugh at yourself these are the people that will help remind you not to take yourself so seriously and who will be ready to make you smile whether they are in the same room or hundreds of miles away over the phone.

These are the girls who make me laugh at myself (and at them):
When I my have a lapse and forget how to laugh at myself or when I can't muster a laugh, but could just use a smile, these are the girls I turn to. These girls are my extended family. These girls know the meaning and power of "Blue Steel".

Now I can't leave out a very important piece of who I am and how I became a person that knows how to laugh at herself. Though my friends may have helped foster this growth, I first saw how to truly laugh at myself through my family. Mainly these three women:
These sisters will always be able to laugh at themselves and each other. In fact there are documented hours and years of them laughing at themselves and at each other, thanks to their father. There is a great history of humor in my family and a great future for it as well. As they say, "The more things change, the more they stay the same".Here's to the people in our lives who have taught us how to laugh at ourselves!

We laugh a lot. That's for sure. Sure beats the alternative, doesn't it? - Betty White

I Love Lucy

I'd rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done. - Lucille Ball

It is a day late, but yesterday would have been famous funny lady Lucille Ball's 100th birthday. Lucy will always have a big piece of my heart. For one thing she and my grandmother will be inextricably linked in my memory. Whenever I see Lucy on Television I see my grandmother in her. I picture my grandmother as many would have known her, but as I never I had, a young, vibrant red head (at heart) who was full of life. I like to picture her as the woman on the screen stuffing chocolates into her mouth and stomping on grapes with her close friend Stella.

I also admire Lucille Ball for her strength and ambition. She was a funny lady that brought a lot of ground breaking ideas and themes to television. Her tv shows and movies never cease to fill you with good feelings and make you laugh hysterically. She truly put all of her heart into what she did and though she may have had regrets they certainly were not for things she had not tried to accomplish.

Here is to Lucy, who really knew what it meant to spend time laughing at yourself!
I am a real ham. I love an audience. I work better with an audience. I am dead, in fact, without one. - Lucille Ball

Laughing at Myself

Don't take life too seriously you'll never get out of it alive. - Elbert Hubbard

This is what I've learned during my first 25 years on earth. I've spent a whole lot of time taking myself WAY too seriously and all that has gotten me is trouble. So I've learned you need to live life with a sense of humor. You need to smile and laugh as much as possible during what little time you have here.

The quote above came to mind when I was trying to think of a way to start off my new blog. Of course the first thing I had to do was google it, because I had no idea where I had picked this quote up from. Then I panicked for just a second because the first site that came up listed the quote as being from the National Lampoon movie Van Wilder. All in all not the worst movie I've ever seen, but not necessarily the type of movie I'd want to live my life by. This thought made me laugh to myself as I asked myself the question "Would this be an example of taking life too seriously?"
But eventually I came across the actual author of the quote Mr. Elbert Green Hubbard, and I proceeded to read his Wikipedia article. Interesting fella this Hubbard. He was an author, originally from Western New York, who started his own Arts & Crafts movement community and passed away in the sinking of the Lusitania. Now this man did not take himself too seriously and he lived a very interesting life. Though I hope I do not share the same end as Mr. Hubbard (drowning being one of my biggest fears) I do hope that I can heed his words and not take myself too seriously as often as possible.

Here is to life, love and laughing at ourselves!