A #LoveLansing Word Association: Your Thoughts?

With all the cool things going on in #LoveLansing these days all you have to do is pay attention for 5 minutes and you can find something to do.

I don’t want to influence your thoughts so I won’t list them all here, but I do want to try something fun.  I went through the following list and listed what I thought of for all the following words.  Now I want you to do the same.

Take this list, copy it into a comment, and then connect each word with the first thing that comes to mind for you.

for example:   Jedi :: Luke Skywalker  or iPod :: Angry Birds

Lansing ::

Okemos ::

Haslett ::

Mason ::

Grand Ledge ::

Holt ::

East Lansing ::

South Side ::

Dowtown ::

REO Town ::

Old Town ::

Business ::

Bar ::

Hangout ::

River ::

Brew ::

Favorite ::

Store ::

Campus ::

Best ::

Worst ::

Fun ::

Most Interesting ::

Online ::

Leader ::

Personality ::

Thanks for your thoughts!  Stay tuned for my posting of my responses soon!

-John

Authentic, Elegant, The House is You.

Hi again everyone!

Have you ever wished there were little features of your house that looked, or functioned differently.

“I wish the yard didn’t drain back to the garage”

“I wish the porch overhang was supported better so it didn’t sag in the middle”

“I hate the way the siding looks on that part of the house”

“Why does our house look so much worse than the neighbors?  It’s like it just doesn’t fit the neighborhood”

Have you ever had a thought run through your head that sounded something like that?  You probably missed something when you built/designed your house.  Or worse yet, has THIS happened to you?

That is where my referral for today would have come in to help.  If you have, or could find yourself in this situation, I would encourage you to get in touch with Dan, the owner of East Arbor Architecture.  He is out of Mid-Michigan and Working with an architect that appreciates little details will help you be, and ultimately stay satisfied with your hosue.  Oh, and P.S. Dan LOVES older houses, and older buildings.  Once you meet him you’ll see why his work is ‘Authentic, Elegant, East Arbor.’

You can find Dan and EastArbor online at:

http://eastarbor.blogspot.com/

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/daniel-bollman/9/795/997

An Image you Couldn’t Imagine

Today I want to talk about a business woman with an eye for well…everything. Shelley Davis Mielock is the owner of Mieshel Image Consulting, which as the name suggests is an image consulting business which Shelley runs out of my favorite Mid-Michigan metropolis: Lansing!

Shelley not only can help someone with the way they present themselves from a fashion standpoint (a professional suit for a business person for example), but also focuses alot on peoples behaviors, and communication styles as well.  She gives public lectures on various topics as well as private coaching where she can work one on one with someone.

If you are a professional, businessperson, male or female you could benefit from meeting with Shelley.   Check out Mieshel Image Consulting online at:

http://www.mieshelimage.com/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lansing-MI/Mieshel-Image-Consulting/56145512700

Twitter: http://twitter.com/mieshelimage

At the Movies Armed and Ready

Today I am going to talk about Cinema Soldier.  A blog run by my friend Jeff that covers all things movies and films.  Any page with a whole section called “Awesome” deserves quite the shout out.

Any time I have a conversation with a friend about going to see a new movie, the thought “I should read the review on Cinema Soldier” goes through my head.  Anytime you want to catch a cool new trailer, find fun facts on new films, or a candid review about whether or not a movie meets all the hype or not, jump over and give Cinema Soldier a read.

You can find Jeff and Cinema Soldier online at:

http://www.cinemasoldier.com/

http://www.facebook.com/cinemasoldier#!/cinemasoldier

http://twitter.com/JeffreyVC

Happy Film Watching everyone!

Get your travel on.

Today I am going to talk about a great place to go if you are someone who likes to take trips all over the place. I for one haven’t done a ton of international travel (other than my 2006 study abroad to China)…..yet.  I don’t count my countless trips to Canada to see family.  I have gone all over different parts of the U.S. though, so I do have some travel experience.

STA Travel East Lansing

You could want to just do something as small as book a flight to Chicago for the weekend.  You could want to plan out a 3 month long journey around Europe with nothing more than a backpack and a titanium spork.  As long as your travel plans don’t involve a stop at the moon the folks over at STA Travel in East Lansing can help you get your trip figured out, booked, and in order.

They will do everything they possibly can to make sure your travel experience is everything you want it to be.  From researching hotels, or hostels to stay at, to working with your group that you are traveling with, to helping update stuff as your trip is in progress (hopefully they won’t have to though).  Their staff is very up-beat and friendly.  A friend of mine I sent there recently  said “They were soo nice and helpful”.  That says it all.

So if you want to get in touch with them you can find them on the web at:  http://www.statravel.com/cps/rde/xchg/us_division_web_live/hs.xsl/east-lansing.htm or email them  at: MSU@statravel.com

(and if you are a student, they can really hook you up…. Bonus!)

Happy Travels people!

The (red) workhorse behind the creativity.

Hey all,

Today I’m going to talk about Lisa, who as I put it in my title is the workhorse behind Red Horse Creative.  Lisa is a business woman who has taken her love for horses, art, design and drawing and combined them into her graphic design business: Red Horse Creative.

Red Horse Creative

Whether you just need a logo designed, or help putting together something a small as a brochure Red Horse Creative can help take the thoughts in your head, and visually turn them into a logo, ad campaign, banner, or whatever else may help your business.  Give em’ a try!  you won’t be dissapointed!

You can find Red Horse online at  http://www.redhorsecreative.com/ or on their facebook fan page at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Red-Horse-Creative/354644101932

Difference in a frame of mind.

Hey everyone,  (yeah, you… both of you…)

Just a quick, interesting thought about a conversation I heard on the radio this morning.

I was hopping through the presets on my radio dial trying to find something that wasn’t commercials and popped in on a conversation that the two radio DJ’s were having on 88.1 SmileFM http://smile.fm/ about how this is a full week for people going back to work, but how excited kids must be that school is getting out.

Pick One!

There wasn’t a whole lot else to the conversation that I caught because I had arrived at my stop but It got me thinking:

Of all the things they could have picked to talk about, they picked something happy/uplifting.

They could have easily complained about traffic, construction, oil in the gulf or a whole host of other things, but they did not.  I thought that was great.

So where I am going with this thought is that their perspective and the thing(s) they focused on totally changed my perspective and my mood.  So in all the stuff you have going on, be thoughtful (ha, ha) of where your thoughts are drifting, and you can definitely change the way your day goes.

Have a good one!

Happy Memorial Day Weekend! …Now put that thing down!

Happy Memorial Day everyone!

What an absolutely beautiful weekend in Lansing we have had. (or #lovelansing if you are on twitter)  This is a time where friends get together to play games, swim in pools for the first few times of the year, and enjoy each others company.  It is a time when people go “up north” to the lake, or the cabin, and spend time on the water, in the woods, or just relaxing in front of a bon fire.  There could be yard work, and grilling, or there could be parades, and memorial services.  Any number of activities will line the agenda for the weekend.

Whatever it is you spend time doing this weekend, I bet you saw the same thing I saw (and did) at times.  You spend all this time, emotion, energy, and hype building up how you get to spend time with friends or family, and when you got around them what do we all do?

We sit on our phones and text message our friends that are not around.  We update our Foursquare and Twitter accounts saying where we were.  We sent pictures of the days events to Facebook and Flickr.  We dissapear in a sense into the chatty kathy world that is our social media networks, and phase out of the world that holds the events we spend the weekend doing.

I for one (prompted by some friends) have been trying very hard to keep the phone put down when I am in one of those situations where my attention should be fully on the people I am with, or the event I am doing.  So if you see me out and about, playing on the phone, and I should be engaged in conversation or living in that moment i’m in, feel free to say something.  I’ll gladly put it away and enjoy the rest of my weekend.

Thanks to our Armed forces people.  To all my friends who have served, I’m glad you made it back.  Thank You!

Enjoy the rest of the weekend boys and girls!

23 stories of…Fun!

I am very excited about to subject of today’s blog post.   This weekend I snapped this picture of the Boji Tower. http://tweetphoto.com/18065872 Lansing’s tallest building.

It was a great perspective to look up at the building and realize that if I play my cards right, I will be on the roof of that building in just a few short weeks.  I will have the opportunity to rappell down the wall of the building as part of a fundraiser for the Team Lansing Foundation. http://www.teamlansing.org/

This will be a great event, and will allow what is looking to be quite a list of participants to scale the building, get a VERY unique view of our wonderful city, and raise some money for revitalizing and restoring more and more of the character that is our awesome little city here in the heart of our state.

To learn more about the event click here: http://teamlansing.dojiggy.com/

To learn more about the boji tower click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boji_Tower

To help me fundraise for the event (nudge nudge), click here: http://teamlansing.dojiggy.com/pledge/index.cfm?mid=HAYNERJ47

Thanks!  Have an awesome week!

It’s all about Serving Others, Ignite Lansing 3.0 Video

Hey all,

I would like to give a huge shout out to the organizers and volunteers and sponsors and everyone else who helped make Ignite Lansing 3.0 a success!

They were even cool enough to put the time and energy into cleaning up our clips (editing out background crowd noise) and putting our slide videos online. If you would like to see mine you can below.  If you want to see the other 14 awesome presenters, as well as the past 2 events, you can see them here:  http://www.youtube.com/user/IgniteLansing

I thought Ignite was one of the biggest, most fun events to hit downtown lansing in quite some time.  Here’s to hoping there’s a 4.0 sometime in the future!  If you want to learn more about what ignite Lansing is, check out their site here: http://ignitelansing.com/ .