Monday, September 13, 2010

Hi,

I haven’t blogged in awhile, so I thought I’d do a short blog explaining my absence of late and brag a bit.

Why is it I seem to loose employees right before a holiday.  It happened at Memorial Day and now Labor Day.  New hire Alyce actually started on Labor Day and is working in nicely.  She misses some details, but every room she cleans, she walks out of a clean room.  That’s my biggest priority, CLEAN.  So I’m very happy.  The details will come in time.  The Parador isn’t a Marriott, each room is unique and there’s a ton to remember.  So today is her one week anniversary and she’s in the Mansion alone.  I’ll go over shortly to check on her rooms, I’m sure if I find anything, it will be minor.

I use Papua New Guinea fair trade organic coffee.  Iron Star Roaster here in Pittsburgh roasts if for me.  I was running low on the in room coffee packets about a month ago, so I called them and ordered more.  They were out, but supposedly it was in route.  I spoke with Tim a number of times, the coffee was in LA, but held up in customs.  Tim kept calling his supplier for updates, he even started calling around to see if anyone else had the beans.  Finally they arrived last Friday late morning, he roasted them, packaged 50 in room packets, and two five whole been bags for me AND DELIVERED THEM AROUND 5 P.M.  Talk about customer service.  Their web site’s sort of week, but they’re great people and carry great products and they ship anywhere.

Now, to brag, The Parador Inn of Pittsburgh is now 100% HD.  All guest rooms have HDTV.  These new TV’s are so much lighter than the old style.  I replaced Ruellia’s 32″ with a new HDTV and carried the new TV up with one hand and the new DirecTV box in the other.  I really struggled getting the old monster down those stairs (and then down the basement stairs).  Anyone want one or three analog TV’s for free?  Too late, I just donated them and the old style DirecTV boxes to Goodwill.

Busy last couple of weeks.  Two weeks ago we had a Steeler’s home game on Thursday and then Labor Day weekend.  I was sold out for four nights.  This past weekend, the Steelers played Sunday and the few guests room that weren’t booked for three nights, I sold those rooms on the open nights and ended up sold out for three nights this weekend.  Yeah.  🙂  Also, I’m sold out the next five weekends.  Nina & Jeff are getting married this weekend (not here) and are housing their guests here and the following weekend I’m hosting Jamie & Randy’s wedding (they live right over on the Mexican War Streets).  Then there’s two more Steeler home games and the other weekend is just sold out for no particular reason other than everyone loves to come and visit me.  🙂

By the way, I believe I’ve talked about my search engine ranking.  I have been diligently working on improving my ranking.  Most all of my business comes from the web.  When I was in Florida, I was happy with 30 visits a day to my web site.  When I moved up here, I kept my web page.  I went from being The Parador of the Palm Beaches to The Parador of Pittsburgh.  Well, talk about messing with the search engines.  At one point, Google dropped me totally (I did a search “bed breakfast pittsburgh pa” and stopped looking after 1,000 listings).  At the same time, Yahoo had me in the 200’s.  A guest stayed here and he was pretty knowledgeable about web pages and we did a barter thing and he definitely helped.  Kevin brought me to within 100 in Google and Yahoo was around 150.  Then he got me to Google within twenty and Yahoo 60.  I was the half way point between Kevin and his girlfriend.  They’ve since broke up and I haven’t seen him in a year (we E-mail periodically, if you’re reading this Kevin, I still owe you a weekend).  My printer Vollkommen hired this fantastic web guy, Kirk.  Since Kirk and myself reworked my web site, I’ve been in the top five of Google, MSN, ASK and AOL.  PIA Yahoo has kept me between 20 and 30.  Last week when I did my weekly search Google HAD ME IN THE #1 SLOT AND I’VE BEEN THERE SINCE.  Sorry for shouting, I’m just supper excited.  Yahoo has even had me in the top five lately.  If you depend on your web site to drive business, I definitely recommend contacting Joe (owner of Vollkommen) and have them look at your site.

And this was going to be a short blog?

Frustration.  I swear, when I find something I like, they drop it from production.  I’m not against change and improvements, but they seem to drop excellent products and replace them with these new products that don’t live up to the old.  When I was in Florida, there was this lo flo water conservation shower head call Euro Flow sold at HomeDepot, I haven’t seen it in years.  All the ones I see now have all these bells and whistles and don’t give have the added pressure these little babies did (I still have one in my shower, they last).  All of my ceiling fans/lights have two pull chains, one for the fan and one for the light.  I like consistency, I have a dolphin for the fan and a seahorse for the light (get it sea/seehorse).  I can’t find the seahorses anymore.  I’ve had this dust pan on a stick for a number of years.  Two years ago it developed a crack and I started looking for a replacement.  Lots of dust pans you bend over with, lots of lobby pans (the ones that fold up when you lift them from the floor), but for two years I haven’t been able to find a dust pan that doesn’t fold up.  Blankets, I have used the same blankets on my beds for years, I love them.  The cloth is solid and fuzzy with satin borders.  They are long enough that they reach from the pillow to the foot of the bed and can be tucked under the mattress.  The sides drape nicely over the mattress and are comfortably covered by the bed spread.  Out of desperation, I have bought retail micro fiber blankets (that don’t fit properly), blankets that sort of look like bed spreads and other frustrating excuse for blankets.  I went to Atlantic City Delaware last winter to a trade show trying to find what I want.  Did hook up with a commercial distributor, Mills Distributing and thought I had things covered (pun intended).  Well, we’ve been back and forth for months now and I still don’t have my blankets.  One of my watering cans has a small leak, so I was at Lowe’s two weeks ago and the closest thing I could find to what I wanted, I bought.  When I got home and filled it with water, I had to use two hands to carry it because of how the handle was cutely positioned, the weight of the water pulled the nose down and the water would pour out if you grasped it anywhere on the handle with one hand.  I hope it’s looking cute back on Lowe’s shelf.

OK, I’ll quit whining, for now.  With Alcyce, you should be seeing more of me here.

bye,

ed