ManeyDigital

Turkey for Me and a Turkey for You

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Thanksgiving is a big holiday for me. It’s the one holiday where family — immediate, extended and those you pick up along the way — get together to, well, give thanks for what we have. For me, that traditionally means tons of people crowded around a too small table with kids relegated to a makeshift table in the living room, uncles crashed on the couch and Detroit football on the television. Tradition. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Until today. This year, we broke with tradition — and for good reason. Friends set us up with passes to the 34th Street bleachers in front of Macy’s for the annual Thanksgiving Day Parade. (Rick and John, thank you once again!). I posted images here.

We got an early start, lucked out with the weather and enjoyed the floats, marching bands and balloons streaming by right in front of us. The girls even got to see Miley Cyrus and Miranda Cosgrove up close.

(For the record, I was able to keep some of the tradition alive by crashing on my sister-in-law’s couch after the parade — and after some great turkey — while the Cowboy’s played on the television.)

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Filed under: Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Miley Cyrus, Miranda Cosgrove, Thanksgiving

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THE OLD STUFF

CONTACT ME

You can email me, reach me on IM or Skype (I'm mikemaney on most services), follow me on Twitter, see my photos on Flickr, watch my videos on YouTube or check out my professional background on Linkedin. Whew.

ABOUT ME

My Twitter profile says I’m a former Calvin Klein underwear model, father/husband, and stimulator of developer influencers. Well, I guess two out of three isn’t bad.

First, the personal me: I’m a father to two of the smartest, funniest, most talented and most beautiful girls on the planet (they get most of that from their mother). Speaking of, I’m married to a saint. I look a little like Andre Agassi if he got stung by a swarm of bees. I think Buffett and Springsteen are musical gods. I’ve run a 4:30 mile, a 1:19:00 half marathon and two full marathons (Chicago and New York City). I don't run as much as I used to, instead channeling my inner Lance Armstrong on the back roads of Bucks County, Pa. I’ve skied Tuckerman’s Ravine and survived. Despite being years out of practice, I can still climb a respectable 5.9. I once hung out with Chris Farley on the set of Saturday Night Live.

Some of the things I like (in no particular order): road biking, skiing, photography, travel (the non-tour, no-agenda kind), wine, Jimmy Buffett, Bruce Springsteen, Bill Bryson, The West Wing, and great comedy.

Now, the professional stuff: I’m a media junkie. Despite (or perhaps, because of) being in the PR business for roughly the past two decades, I think the Fourth Estate is one of the most important components of society. I’ve worked with big, global corporations (IBM, AT&T, Unisys), big honking agencies (Ogilvy, Grey, Saatchi) and exciting startups (MindTouch, Krugle, Mashery). I’m a believer in open source and an unabashed Mac fanboy. In my current role, I’m the Director of Influencer Management at Alcatel-Lucent. And if I can ever track down the last of those Polaroids, I'd someday like to run for President.

A respected mentor and former colleague once said I have an uncanny ability to help executives hone their messages and craft compelling, creative stories (that colleague also said I liked to kick the snot out of the competition). I've written a number of well-received speeches for executives, but I'm no Peggy Noonan. I've placed stories in outlets big and small. I'm a geek. I've crippled enough devices with alpha and beta software to be dangerous at a keyboard. That inquisitiveness makes me an early tech adopter (if you think Twitter is buggy today, you should have seen it when I was first using it in 2007).

I attended and (Yay!)graduated from Trenton State College (now The College of New Jersey) with a Bachelor of Arts in Communications and a concentration in professional writing and organizational communications. I grew up in a small town in northwestern New Jersey where I attended and (Yay again!) graduated from Hackettstown High School and lived out my Al Bundy'esque dreams as an all-state soccer star.

FLICK ME? FLICK YOU!

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