Kerstin Baker-Ash

Maternity. Leave?

My maternity leave starts around 6 tonight. Maternity leave? No work? No commuting? I know most women would be ecstatic - and to a certain extent, the possibility of cooking, napping and resting before Baby Ash arrives makes me ecstatic, too - but I'm a bit terrified.

Why would I be terrified? I'm moving on to a stage in my life that, although desperately wanted, leaves a very longstanding and comfortable routine and reality behind. Work, couple time, seeing friends on a whim - that won't exist anymore. Let me clarify that I'm not in mourning for my old life - I'm beyond excited to start a magnificent journey as a mom - I'm just wondering about the unknown.

What does maternity leave when you've got nobody to take care of yet shape out to be? I had visions of whipping up Bree Van De Kamp-esque meals, taking long walk through the Hertfordshire woods and sleeping in. If I'm honest, I have very little energy for anything beyond short spurts of cooking and cleaning, and forget the sleeping in. Baby Ash has a single-minded schedule of kicking, rib grabbing and bladder bouncing (arguably it's favorite activity) that makes any regular sleep pattern rather difficult. I know, I know - it's preparation for Baby Ash's grand entrance into the world of nighttime feeding and changing - but can Mom get just a bit of rest to build up her stores in advance? It would seem nature has a cruel, alternative agenda to mine.

And what happens to Work Kerstin? I've been working pretty much since I left university, and the notion of unemployment - paid unemployment, in fairness - is a bit daunting. How do I define myself beyond mom after the baby is born? Am I still an account manager, a search engine marketing geek, a speaker? Of course, many women have come before and managed to carve out a delineator between motherhood and careerhood - I'm just wondering how exactly that's done.

I'm sure the answers will come to me soon enough, and that I'll not only be Baby Ash's mommy but a woman with professional ambition and skills that I can still call my very own. When staring at a very different reality, it's hard not to get philosophical about the changes you'll be making in life as you know it. My comfort zone changes today, and for ten weeks I get to define what that is. In ten weeks' time, Baby Ash will define that new reality, and I can't wait.

Roll on January.

The Swine Flu Vaccine and Pregnancy

With a Swine Flu vaccine fast approaching the market, there's been a lot of publicity recently about who should or shouldn't be rolling up their sleeves to get a jab. Pregnant women are on the UK, US and Canadian lists for priority vaccines, alongside health care workers, the elderly and those with chronic health conditions.

I won't be getting a vaccination.

Some might view a vaccine refusal as irresponsible, given the fact I'm 27 weeks pregnant and in a high-risk group because of the body's natural immunosuppression during pregnancy. I'm not a doctor, nor am I a medical professional by any stretch of the imagination. However, I feel that the current information about the use of adjuvants or mercury in seasonal and swine flu vaccines lacks the gravity to give me total confidence in giving myself and my developing fetus a vaccine.

I'm aware of the risks associated with both the seasonal flu and H1N1. I know that pregnant women have fallen seriously ill or died after catching swine flu. I know that I work in one of the largest cities in the world, and that there's not a lot one can do if someone sneezes over your head on a crowded Tube carriage (apart from shooting a disgustingly dirty look).

I still won't be getting the vaccine.

According to a document from Eli Lilly, exposure to thimerosal (the organomercury compound found in seasonal flu vaccine) could result in "fetal changes, decreased offspring survival and lung tissue changes" going on to say that exposing a fetus "may cause mild to severe mental retardation and mild to severe motor coordination impairment." Even if it's a tiny chance, I'm not going to expose my child to a chemical which could lead to mild to severe disability. Yesterday, I refused the flu vaccine being given out at work for that reason; I will not receive a vaccine with more than four times the daily recommended limit of mercury, especially when pregnant women are advised to avoid mercury in the first place. Kind of contradictory, isn't it?

So, that's the seasonal flu vaccine. What about the H1N1 swine flu vaccine? Not going for that, either. Testing hasn't been as comprehensive because they're rushing to send a vaccine to market, and the only available vaccine in the UK contains adjuvants. Adjuvants carry a very minute risk but a risk nonetheless of the recipient contracting Guillain-Barré Syndrome, an autoimmune disorder. 

Adjuvants are chemical additions to vaccines that can boost the immune system's response to a vaccine. Adjuvants are also found in a lot of swine flu vaccines expected to hit hospitals across the developing world when we finally get the go-ahead to start vaccinating the population. The ratio of non-adjuvant vaccines to adjuvant vaccines is quite low. Canada only has a stockpile of 1 million for every pregnant woman and small child - it's very likely this is not enough. In the UK, the government does not offer an adjuvant-free vaccine; Pandemrix, recommended for use in pregnant women and small children by the EU, contains adjuvants. In the US, the CDC has advised for pregnant women not to be given an adjuvanted vaccine.

Although the risk is minute, why would a pregnant woman expose herself to the very distant possibility that she could be disabled for the rest of her life and suffer a miscarriage as a result of taking a "recommended" vaccine? No thanks.

I'm not anti-vaccines. I fully expect in the near future to be holding a screaming baby receiving it's first vaccine, and telling a toddler with a sore arm what a brave kid they've been. Still, I find myself in the majority of the pregnant population; perhaps driven by our desire to have the healthiest babies possible and expose them to as little harm as we can while we're still in total control of their daily surroundings. I'm also starting my maternity leave at the end of next week, and won't be exposing myself on a daily basis to the whims, sniffles and coughs of fellow passengers on the Tube. A swine flu vaccine is unlikely to become available in the seven working days I've got left, despite the NHS' promise that it will be available from tomorrow. Why take it when I likely won't need it?

Call it maternal instinct, call it intelligence, call it stupidity - I've chosen to take a calculated risk and not receive the vaccine. Good luck to everyone else struggling with the decision. It's not an easy one.

The Crush of London Commuting

I really do enjoy working in London. I'm close to any store I need to be, the food choice at lunchtime (even though they closed Harry Morgan's) is excellent, and I really do feel like I'm in the center of everything. That's probably because I am. This is an unfortunately typical scene which awaits any weary commuter trying to get home after a long day at work at Oxford Circus:

 

There's really no point in getting worked up about the wait. Most people in this photo have their heads down (save for the curious chap smiling for the camera on the left), reading a newspaper. We're used to this - it happens every day and you just have to wait it out (usually less than 20 minutes). What gets my goat is the people who decide that they are going to try another method of transportation (usually gormless tourists with oversized suitcases), pushing past everyone and saying "excuse me" when they really mean "get the f*%£ out of my way!". I seem to attract pushers for some unknown reason - forget the fact I'm wearing a large TfL "Baby on Board" badge or that I am, at seven months pregnant, sporting a rather telltale uterine bump.

Some people, usually younger ignorant little sods and sodettes, see my waddle as a sign of weakness. I wouldn't do anything to put myself or the baby in harms way, but if you're trying to cut in front of me, I will just keep walking (arms around the bump, of course). I have pregnancy weight on my side, and at 5'10 I'm slightly taller than the average Londoner, male or female. Trying to get on the Tube when people haven't yet exited is another prime example of gravity and weight, I'm not stopping, and I'm coming down from the train - that usually means you are, too. In real life, I'm very polite and courteous, but something about the sooty London air turns me into a fullback who believes that "every little helps" when teaching good manners to the masses of the capital.

Thankfully, good samaritans exist, even in the urban social skills deprivation zone known as London. A lady stopped someone from pushing past by putting her arm out in front of my stomach, saying to the pusher to watch herself. Another lady asked me if I was okay as we were navigating through the crowds after they finally opened Oxford Circus one night. More recently, owing to my gargantuan stomach, have been jumping out of their seats as soon as I do the pregnant belly rub. If all else fails, I break out my secondary weapon - the North American accent - and politely tell the sir or ma'am that they're sitting in priority seating for pregnant women.

I'll miss my job and the people I work with, but I'm very much looking forward to waddling back into the confines of a relatively polite Hertfordshire, where pushing is seen as rude, not necessary.

The Best Analytics Apps for iPhones

Own an iPhone? Analytics junkie? I've reviewed four analytics apps (at my own cost, no disclosure needed here) to help you choose the best one to get your fix.

Analytics App

One of the more robust tools on the iPhone market, Analytics App is a great tool to monitor multiple sites across a single login. That is, when it works. I've had login issues for the last couple of weeks - fair enough, they say that you can try refreshing the captcha on your Google account via Safari on your iPhone to get it to work, but I've so far been SOL. When it does work, Analytics App is stunningly easy to use and more than comprehensive. You want access to your custom reports created in Google Analytics? Goals? Event Tracking? Done. My one little gripe is that you can't drill down into geographic content. 

Since it is, in my opinion, the most comprehensive analytics app available and I've had it since February 2009, I haven't put in for a refund because I'd like to give them a chance to correct the issue. I still wouldn't bother downloading it if you haven't got the tool already; they don't think they'll be fixing it until late October.  

Touchlytics

The new kid on the block from New Street Software, Touchlytics has a few more bells and whistles than Analytics App does. I bought the Pro version ($4.99), with access to 40 different reports. One feature I really like is the ability to tilt the phone sideways to get a visual representation of your site's results - handy if you're with a client or colleague and need to show a segment that might not be on the presentation you've already prepared.

Touchlytics also has a few nice but not essential frills on the side. Shaking your iPhone updates the data (much like the Facebook app for iPhone), and you can doubly protect your data from prying eyes with another passcode lock (if your home screen lock isn't enough). Helpfully (and not frilly at all), there's a drilldown by country location, but it would be even more handy if this drilldown went down to regions or cities. You'd need this when you're launching a multi-city campaign with the same creatives and needed to tell the client what worked in Cheyenne didn't work in Boise.

The drawback? It's a bit clunky when you ask it to perform multiple tasks sequentially. I've found myself staring at a black screen for a few moments while the app shuts down and takes me to the home screen. Annoying if you're trying to show people lots of data, but not a dealbreaker - you can get right back in to the report you've just been looking at.  

Analytics Agent

Global Agent Inc offers two versions of its Analytics Agent, Pro and Lite (the latter being free). It's not clunky by any stretch of the imagination, but the instructions are written in such a way that I didn't feel comfortable shelling out the £2 to buy the Pro version. It would be a relatively sexy interface too, if the advertising on the Lite version didn't cover up the title of the report you were trying to access.

Obvious drawbacks include needing to sign in every time (even though I'd set the application to remember my password) and the fact that this was released before someone with better than average English skills gave it a once-over. In the Lite version, you're not able to select the date range you'd like to see, and I don't know if it's available in the Pro version because the features on the Global Agent site are written in Japanese. This is definitely an application I'd give a miss, even at the free price tag.

Ego

We all have big egos in search marketing, right? Ego will help you get your fix of followers, site visits and stats at a glance, but it's not comprehensive by any stretch of the imagination (fair enough, it's not marketing itself as such). With all your ego-feeding needs at the touch of a button, it's fair to say that this is the harried man's version of a bolder analytics package.

There's really only support for three major ego fixes though. You've got Twitter, where you can check how many followers you've gained or lost overnight and what your last tweet was - handy for remembering a particularly saucy night out and making a mental note to delete the tweet as soon as possible. There's Google Analytics, and it's dead simple to check how many page views you've had today, yesterday, this week, this month and this year - not anything beyond that though. Then you've got Feedburner, where you can check your stats to make sure your last post didn't tick people off enough for them to remove your blog from their feed reader. There's also support for Ember, Mint and Squarespace, but since these are fee-paying analytics or hosting services, there's not much use for those of us who don't subscribe or host our blogs there. Hopefully, they'll add TypePad (what this blog runs on) support soon. In the meantime, it's a fun little app with a sexy interface - just don't expect to get much meaningful data beyond visitors and followers.

The Bottom Line

I would hesitate to recommend Analytics App because it's not working for me right now. It's too bad, because it's simple to use and doesn't send me into home screen frustration if I ask it to switch between accounts. The winner by default (and by good design, it must be said) is Touchlytics, who also do a Lite version for $1.99. The functionality is superior, you can extract meaningful insight and data, and the frills add a cherry on the top of an already fantastic analytics app.

Ethical PPC, Part Two

Back in March, I wrote a post going over my opinion on ethical paid search. I had always meant to go back to the post for part two, but it's been on the back burner for a while because of my very busy but very enjoyable paying job. Now that I'm largely writing posts on the weekends and scheduling them for the week, I hope to revisit a couple of missing part twos - the first installment is Ethical PPC.

In Part One, I talked about Brand Bidding and Duplicate Display URLs, the bread and butter of an unethical PPC arsenal. The next two, while still relatively standard in cheating the system, are a little more advanced and take longer to set up and monitor.

Dayparting Tricks

You're an affiliate, let's again pick Argos for ease of reference, and you're not allowed to bid on their brand term. You don't want to use their display URL, that's too costly and you can run the huge risk of being caught once they've seen a dip in brand traffic. However, you still want desperately to get those easy brand conversions they talk about on your affiliate forums.

Dayparting, a technique that brands use to maximize spend and ROI, is used frequently by affiliate marketers to fly under the radar and still bring in those brand sales. How do they do it? Simply factor in working hours (weekdays, 8 to 6), and use your campaign settings to switch the campaign off during the day when you're most likely to be noticed bidding on a brand. The theory behind this is that brand monitors, whether they're working at the affiliate program or the brand partner, will normally perform checks during the day to make sure their brand is protected. In the evening and on weekends, when they're not thinking about the brand or work, the playing field is left wide open for affiliates to come in and bid on the brand terms they're not supposed to, with little perceived risk of being caught.

Of course, most affiliate programs nowadays have a system in place to check brand searches 24/7 - Snoopy from Affiliate Window being one of them - reducing the potential for getting away with brand bidding. If you run your own in-house affiliate program, tools like AdGooroo can also monitor which display URLs have shown up on your brand searches, even if you're on a beach in Thailand, sipping a margarita and not thinking about brand bidding affiliates.

Fooling Automated Editorial 

Back when Google removed brand protection from the UK, the playing field was wide open for competitors and affiliates alike to bid on previously fenced of brand terms. Google assured us that we were still protected; our competitors couldn't have our brand names in the title because Automated Editorial would pick it up and reject it right away. It didn't, and doesn't, work like that.

Take Direct Line Insurance for an example. A brand search on "DirectLine" (no spaces) serves up ads aplenty from competitors and affiliates. How do they skirt the automatons from Google? Fairly simply. Misspellings, the absence of spaces and hyphens or plus signs don't flag automatically in Google's automated review system. So, if you want to grab a quick listing for a couple of hours or days before a human reviewer notices, look no further than leaving out a space between a two-word brand term or missing off a letter in the display URL. 

Since Google doesn't prevent competitors or affiliates from bidding on trademarked brand terms anymore, it's relatively simple for their ads to appear against your brand search. Combine that with a very easy workaround for highlighting your brand term (even when it's not the brand), and you've got a recipe for cheap and easy success for affiliates and competitors.

I hope the four classic tactics of unethical PPC campaigns are useful; hopefully, armed with this new information you can further protect your brand and your bottom line. Turn the tables, and let's get some integrity in the SEM industry.

Privacy and Blogs

My husband and I have been discussing this at length recently, given our impending change in circumstances from a married couple to parents in just about three months (!). What level of information will we give out about our new bundle of joy? The gender? The name? The details of the birth? 

We want to keep the baby as private as possible to protect our child. We won't be revealing the name in public, or linking to a newly bought domain name just for Baby Ash. Sure, we'll tell you if the bundle was pink or blue and maybe post a single picture from the hospital (babies faces tend to change rather rapidly, we're told), but apart from that I'll be keeping mum (aren't I punny?) on his/her details.

Why? Call me an over-protective mother if you like, but there are some things that I believe don't belong in the public domain unless both parents agree that it's in the best interests of the child. My husband does not operate much in the online space - he's as clued up as an actuary can be about search engine marketing, but prefers to keep his life, family and thoughts private. On the other side of the spectrum, I post about a lot of things my husband wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole, but we meet in the middle when it comes to our kid.

There are a couple of people we've taken a cue from when it comes to posting online about the baby. We're nowhere near as well known as them online, but they've given us three different approaches to acknowledging their children in their public blogs. 

First, there's Michele Henry from the Toronto Star, who blogged about her pregnancy and is now blogging about her son on Pregnant Pause. She mentions him by name frequently (although I suspect the kid has a different last name from her, otherwise he'd be Hudson Henry...) and has posted a photo of him on the blog (he's more than adorable, by the way). The blog is informative, hilarious and an extremely good read for anyone (I've been reading it throughout my pregnancy), but I wonder if we'd be as comfortable as she is posting photos and details of the baby online.

In the middle part of the spectrum, there's Hadassah Milner. A warmer, kinder person you couldn't find, and she's been documenting her life for a while, including her four boys and her husband on In the Pink. While she frequently acknowledges the men in her life, she uses pseudonyms and grazes over their neighborhood (Montreal is a pretty big city) in an effort to share as much of her life as she's comfortable with. Crucially, she never posts photos of her kids on her blog - something I agree with (while acknowledging that everyone has their own personal opinion on).

At the very private part of the spectrum, there's Barry Schwartz - a guru in the SEM industry and new father to a baby girl, blogging on Cartoon Barry. That's all you know about the kid, apart from references to her gender and when she was born, and a photo of him holding a bundle with hair at the hospital. This is the route we think we'll be going with - people know we have a son or daughter, when he or she was born, but no names, no pseudonyms and no photos apart from the requisite hospital shot.

We'd prefer to use walled gardens, like Facebook or iWeb, which we can password protect for our baby. This isn't to say we don't want to show the world just how gorgeous and amazing he or she is, we just want to control how much exposure the baby has until our kid is 18 and can decide for himself or herself just how much information they want publicized about themselves online.

The pictures here are of two people (myself at the top, my husband on the left) who are well over the age of 18 now, and who have consented to publish some information and photographs of themselves online. We want to give the same decision to our child about how they want to be known online, and inform them of the potential dangers of exposing yourself to people who might not have the greatest social filter in what is and isn't appropriate.

What do you think? What is your advice to two new parents? Are we being too overprotective of the baby, jumping to conclusions about nasties on the web and wanting to keep the child private? Or, are we doing the right thing by controlling the exposure our child has to the outside world before he or she can make an informed decision themselves?

Paid Search Sitelinks - The Inside Story, Part II

Yesterday, in Paid Search Sitelinks - The Inside Story, Part I, we discussed the issues surrounding Google's new beta platform for PPC sitelinks. Today, let's talk about workarounds to the problems, and what this new system can add to your site's ROI potential.

The Workarounds

You've got your four links appearing below your main ads - links that Google has picked for optimization heaven. However, your highest sale volume link isn't appearing because it's CTR is half a percentage point lower than another. The fix is relatively easy - you simply need to work around the system instead of going through it like good boys and girls. In your campaign settings, select the six ads you don't want appearing and delete them. That's it - by removing Google's say over your sitelinks, you remove the need to optimize the titles of the links and the pages they go to. After all, you know best pages within your site for conversion, so you should be able to make a very educated decision about how your site's PPC campaign is displayed in Google.

Campaign settings mean that you're up a certain creek without a paddle if you've structured your account with many ad groups within a single campaign. Firstly, you need to do a bit of restructuring to get the sitelinks for the right campaigns; this may mean building out a campaign with a single ad group, just to make it more tightly targeted. Also, consider this: brand searches are, for the most part, the results that pop up with sitelinks in the natural search results. Your brand results in the natural SERPs are going to be pushed down if you're using paid search sitelinks, so you need to act like a consumer and focus primarily on your brand terms initially. This isn't to say that generic terms (like "insurance", "vacations", "clothes", etc) couldn't be optimized for paid search sitelinks - über-generics are perfect for this beta - it's just good to get a feel for the way searchers interact with your new campaign setup on a safe term first.

Finally, keyword tracking. Honestly, there isn't much of a workaround here. As my confidential informant told me, "the idea here is to increase overall sales." Although tracking results at a keyword level is great and very much recommended in any PPC campaign, treat it like the cherry on your sundae instead of the nuts and track your paid search sitelink results at a campaign level. You should have already split your campaigns out very granularly already, so this tracking will act as close as possible to tracking at the keyword level anyway.

In the Future

How cool would it be if Google came out with a heatmap of SERPs with paid search sitelinks? If they want to keep pushing SEO down (and let's be honest, it's not a money maker by any stretch of the imagination for them), this would be a great case study to analyze eyeball dwell time on PPC sitelinks.

Overall, putting two and two together (more links, more prominence) should make your campaign tick along very nicely. Presumably, the more prominence given to five links from a single advertiser should push it well over the edge in terms of campaign expectations and ROI on brand terms and über-generics.

Are you considering opting in to Google's paid search sitelink beta? Have you already been doing it and found a way to track more granularly than campaign level? If you have, or have any questions about the program, let me know by filling in the comment form below - I'll see if myself or my secret Google snitch can answer them for you.

Paid Search Sitelinks - The Inside Story, Part I

After writing my initial post on paid search sitelinks, I was contacted by someone who is testing sitelinks in the field for a retail client. This person, while wishing to remain anonymous (I've always wanted to say that), has gone through the interface, what the benefits are and why it's not a perfect system yet. 

The Basics

This only works on ads in premium; ads that appear above the natural search results, not alongside them on the left. You can choose up to ten links to appear underneath your main ad - Google will automatically choose four and the settings are applied at campaign level.

The Issues

Since only four links are displayed at one time, you need to find a way to optimize for the best performing links out of the ten you've chosen. Google determines this much like they determine ad rotation - the best CTR wins the game. Even if you want to have all the traffic driving to your biggest money maker, you might be forced to use other links because of a lower CTR. Pants.

Also, these choices are applied at campaign level. So, all the sitelinks will apply to all of the ads eligible in the campaign itself, regardless of ad group. This can result in irrelevant links showing up for your ads.

Presumably, if you're willing to pay top dollar for a premium ad listing (i.e. top position), you'll also have a fancy tracking system in place to track the campaign's effectiveness down to keyword level. Well, scrap it. The sitelink URL usurps the keyword URL - you're no longer tracking at keyword level. 

Tomorrow in Paid Search Sitelinks - The Inside Story, Part II, I'll discuss potential workarounds and optimization techniques to the issues mentioned above. Also, we'll look at the benefits of using sitelinks in your paid search account.

Why Do Recruiters Call You At Work?

Another day, another call or e-mail from a recruiter. I suppose it's a bit trite in this economic climate to complain about getting calls from recruitment consultants, but do they have to do it at work? 

Let's get a couple of things straight:

• You're not a headhunter, you've found me and my job title on LinkedIn and called reception
• It's never a good time to talk at work, you know, in front of colleagues
• I don't want to relocate to Manchester, I don't care how nice you think the city is

Since you found me on LinkedIn and just won't admit it, don't you think it would be helpful to ask me about a role I might be interested in? Qualified for? The "exciting role" I could really "sink my teeth into" isn't in sales, it's certainly not in database management - I mean, just read the title description on the search results for my name:

 

Also, calling three weeks after you've started a new job is awkward to say the least, and it's pretty annoying to have to explain that you're new there in front of people (again, which they would've seen on LinkedIn if they hadn't been intent on making a thousand cold calls before noon). I'm not looking to move jobs, I like the work, the clients, and the people I work with, but that never works as an eff off should. Now? I've got the perfect, airtight excuse these days - and would recommend using it even if it's not true. As soon as you say the p-word, they run scared, stumbling over their words and apologizing for disturbing you at work. Sure, you can call me again in a year when I'm back at work, but are you really going to remember?

Finally - no, I don't want to recommend names of other people at my work that would be interested. Do your own darned job.

Reckon I'll still get calls from recruiters after this post? I sure as heck hope not.

The UK Needs Thanksgiving

I live with a mince pie addict, but even he thinks it's a bit gauche to have a Christmas food section up and running at the end of September. You'd get sick of the holly and the ivy, the fruitcake and the stollen well before the leaves started falling off the trees, right?

The UK needs a Thanksgiving. Obviously not the American kind - celebrating freedom from English persecution would be rather silly - but a nice, harvest festival like the Canucks will be celebrating this weekend. Why? The poor Brits have nothing to raise their spirits or keep them going between the August bank holiday (booze, food and rain) and Christmas (booze, food and rain). They wither from the first week of school to the end of December, when a gluttonous week of glory awaits, only to be followed by another four months of food and family binge abstinence.

Thanksgiving doesn't need to have religious connotations, either. It's a multi-faith celebration of food, family and a day off. It doesn't fall during any fasting periods for Muslims or Jews, so gorging on turkey (both halal and kosher) would be okay.

I miss Thanksgiving, living over here. Finding canned pumpkin in the supermarket is beyond impossible, and even if I got my hands on a tin of orange gold I probably couldn't make a pumpkin pie as nice as my grandmother's. And turkeys? The only time we can get them in a store here is in mid-December, and then you can expect to pay upwards of £50 for the sucker (yeah, who's the sucker?).

So, give those poor Limeys a break. Don't let them wallow in misery between August and December. Don't we all deserve a little pumpkin pie in our lives?

Happy Thanksgiving.