Sleep Masks are an essential Comfort Product these days/

With all the complications of high-stress travel and insane work schedules, sleep sometimes seems to be parceled out in begrudging little doses. So a comfortable sleep mask can be an extremely helpful friend.

But choosing a sleep mask? Why is that so complicated?

Shop the comfort products on the web, and you’ll find a chaotic constellation of variations on the sleep mask. It’s as bewildering as trying to shop for a cell phone.

There are masks with cartoons on them. Masks with assorted nations’ flags on them.

There are masks with integrated noise blockers for the ears. Sexy black satin masks with ruffles to coordinate with provocative lingerie. (We don’t quite understand how this will lead to “sleep.”)

You’ll even read about high-tech masks that are now being developed, including one with programmable configurations of blinking lights designed to stimulate “lucid dreams” —those dreams in which you know you’re dreaming.

All very interesting, for sure. But Bucky’s philosophy on sleep masks is pretty simple, and you can probably guess what it is from the tagline we use with all our products: Comfort for the Whole Planet.

If a sleep mask isn’t comfortable above all else, it’s not going to help you sleep. It’s going to annoy you.

Our 40 Blinks Ultralight Sleep Mask is designed for comfort in every respect. It weighs a mere 2.7 ounces. That’s about the weight of a pair of light cotton socks. But it’s filled with molded foam, so it fits to your face without applying any uncomfortable pressure on the eyes.

Karen, one of our customers, wrote us with a straightforward testimonial to comfort: “I’ve tried them all and only Buckys keep your eyeballs from getting squished.”

Though we major in comfort, we are tuned in with style, so we offer choices. 40 Blinks comes in eleven different colors or patterns We also offer a separate line of eye shades with ear plugs, which coordinate with our Fun Fur Neck Pillow and Utopia Neck Pillow.

Because sleep, we might say, is always in style.

Travel is Stressfull!

Few people find traveling for business to be relaxing. In fact, any traveling, even for vacation, is stressful to most people these days. Add the crowds and expectations of the holidays; you have major challenges traveling at this time of the year.

I am L. John Mason, Ph.D. owner of the Stress Education Center since 1978. Most of my career has been involved in working with people who are medically referred for stress related health problems. These include: headaches, back and neck pain, sleep disturbance, high blood pressure, anxiety, and stress related digestive problems. Throughout the years, there has been an increase in referrals before and after the Holidays due to the extra pressures of travel and expectations that arise during this time of the year.

In the Northern Hemisphere, as Fall turns into Winter and the days begin to grow shorter, the basic and primitive survival mechanisms in our bodies tell us to hunker down and to move around less. But in our busy, modern world, we push ourselves to work long hours and to squeeze in increased social obligations that may include travel to family gatherings and work related responsibilities. Our bodies will begin to tense up and this robs us of energy and potentially creates symptoms that distract us and in many cases, hurt us. To combat the impact of the stress of travel, please consider the possible tools you may require to combat this stress.

The Bucky Company, since 1992, has produced great products that can support you at home, at work, or while traveling. The original Buckwheat Hull U Pillow was designed to support your neck, head, and shoulders while you travel or at home when you read or watch TV. The current line includes Bucky’s Neck Pillows which help reduce stress and tension. The durable and high quality Bucky Buckwheat Hull Bed Pillow is perfect for comfort, relaxation and helps prepare you for the best night of sleep you can find. The Baxter Back Pillow supports your lumbar muscles to help relax you as you drive, travel by airplane or train, or at work. When traveling, the Eye Shades with Ear Plugs can allow you to re-focus yourself in a peaceful way in many travel situations.

For your health and your top performance the comfort and support you can get from these buckwheat hull pillows and products will give you the opportunity to get control over the way you respond to life’s stresses. You deserve to feel great, especially while traveling.

Cyber Monday Shopping – What’s that about?

One late November day in 2005, somebody at a retailers’ association noticed there had been an unusual spike in online orders on the Monday after Thanksgiving.

After a little surveying and analyzing and pondering, the association figured out what was happening. People were returning to work after the long turkey weekend, and maybe not yet being all that inclined to do actual work, they were going online and ordering holiday gifts.

And of course using their computers at “work.”

Thus was born Cyber Monday, the next big shopping day after the traditional retail Black Friday. Online stores moved quickly to greet the cybershopping crowds with huge discounts.

Cyber Monday sales have grown steadily every year since then. In 2011, reports the digital research organization comScore, Cyber Monday became the biggest online shopping day of the year, with U.S. consumers spending $1.028 billion in one day. ComScore reports that half that total can be tracked back to “work” computers.

Merchants have responded with increasingly attractive offers. Some are stretching those huge discounts out from Friday clear through Monday to form a whole Cyber Weekend. You’ll see an awesome cyber Weekend deal on Bucky’s website (www.bucky.com) on Thanksgiving .

The really interesting thing here isn’t the statistics themselves. It’s the big-picture social trend they point toward. We’re becoming an online-shopping culture. Earlier this year, The New York Times ran a story about “web-savvy customers” who actually try to avoid being helped by salespeople when they visit a physical store because they’ve become accustomed to the independence of online shopping.

The obvious attraction of online shopping is convenience, but there appears to be something more to it. A Yale professor of marketing and psychology told the Times that online, we’re in control of the entire shopping experience, and we like that.

And on Cyber Monday, of course, we like the savings. As well as the guilty pleasure of shopping from “work.”

Eco-Friendly Shopping has never been easier!

That slopping-over mound of glossy holiday catalogs on your kitchen counter, the one that’s threatening to grow taller than the cat, and inevitably bound for the recycling mill or landfill? So twentieth-century. And increasingly so unnecessary.

Consider the latest innovation in online catalog shopping: interactive apps for iPad and Android tablets that give shoppers and retailers new capabilities unimaginable in print catalogs. In addition to saving trees.

This is a trend with legs. In 2007, a RetailWire poll of retailers found only 14 percent believed that print catalogs would become obsolete. By 2011, a similar poll found 44 percent saying that print is heading into extinction.

In between those polls the tablet computer sprang into being, tellingly. It’s what has made the new online catalog services so versatile and easy to use.

These services, such as Catalog Spree and Google Catalogs, are like a whole library of catalogs, one that would be far taller than the cat, offering several hundred store catalogs in dozens of categories such as women’s and men’s fashions, outdoor adventure, gadgets, and health and wellness (which is where you’ll find Bucky in Google Catalogs).

They allow you to search and cross-shop offerings from different retailers, buy online immediately or locate the nearest brick-and-mortar stores, and call up more product information than any print catalog can afford to include. In categories such as food and gardening, you’ll even find how-to videos imbedded among the products.

Of coarse, you can always simply shop directly online at www.bucky.com

What are your Thanksgiving Travel Plans?

If we begin our Thanksgiving travel plans with web research, it’s hard to dodge the impression that we’re all helplessly sliding towards the holiday from hell.

Airline prices will be up, planes will be packed, and there won’t be any last-minute deals, warns ABC News. Late November weather triggers travel miseries somewhere on the continent most years. There’s a whole Earthgauge web page with a chronicle of terrible Thanksgiving week storms: 110 mph winds in New Hampshire in 1950, 20 inches of snow in Denver in 1983, the earliest snow ever in Charleston and Savannah in 2006.

And once we get to our destinations, we may not find fair weather indoors at the extended family gathering. A couple of years ago The New York Post reported on a poll that found more than two-thirds of respondents expecting a “gobble squabble” around the Thanksgiving table.

Makes us wonder why we don’t at least shift Thanksgiving to August, when nature might be providing more to be thankful about, and everybody would be a little less grumpy.

At Bucky, we’ve created some simple innovations that you’ll be thankful for on your holiday travels. Quite simply, we make you more comfortable.

We have a great variety of travel pillows filled with cool buckwheat, silky millet, or supportive air to relieve the stress and aches of a long flight. For a truly painless trip, try  the 40 Blinks Ultralight Sleep Mask to help you sleep through it.

The solution to the congested mess at baggage claim, where it’s always difficult to pluck your bag out of the crowd, is an  IdentiGrip luggage ID handle wrap, available in eleven colors and patterns, and including a window for your luggage ID or business card.

There’s one further solution to the Thanksgiving holiday grumbles, and it’s not staying home. It’s shifting perspective. Just a century ago, there weren’t any congested airports or airline delays because there weren’t any airports or airlines. Ever since then, travel has steadily become more reliable, safer, swifter and—yes, cheaper.

In 1962, a government-regulated round trip fare between New York and Los Angeles was $290. In today’s dollars, that’s $2,222.

So even though Thanksgiving travel may be arduous, it’s possible. Let us give thanks.