Paris in the Summer

My buddy in Dallas was talking about his summer plans. He decided that his daughter was old enough at 13 to appreciate Paris, so he’s taking her, his fiance and her 16 year old daughter this summer. He says that they did a “test run” last December when he took them all to New York for a weekend, and everyone had a great time.

One of the tips I wanted to share with him about travel in Europe is that a very cool company will pick you up at the airport and take you to your hotel, resort, or wherever you need to go in STYLE. You can have your choice of types of vehicles – anything and everything exotic is available to you, with a driver, so you don’t have to worry about reading maps and finding your way.

The company is call Resorthoppa and they have a website with everything you need to know to schedule your ride.

Good-bye Harvey Korman

Sorry to learn of the passing of the great comedien, Harvey Korman.

Korman was a regular on the Carol Burnett show – one of my all time favorite variety shows. He and Tim Conway have done stage shows as a comedy team for 8 years, after 10 years on the Carol Burnette show and 2 years on “Mama’s Family” starring Vicki Lawrence.

Over his 45 +/- year career in addition to his TV shows he made more than 30 films, including four comedies directed by Mel Brooks.

He was a great entertainer and the world is just not as funny without Harvey Korman here.

Just Desserts

I was reading about how Johnny Depp lost a lot of weight for one of his recent movie roles. I believe he had to lose about 50 pounds – and he has never been chubby. In an interview he said that knowing he had the part of the very thin character, he knew he had to lose a lot of weight quickly, so he went on a strict diet for 60 days of eating only 1 apple per day and drinking all the coffee he wanted to drink.

There’s no way I could do that, even with a million dollar movie contract on the wings, and I’m not sure that’s medically sound for most people. I’m the first one to admit that I’d love to lose about 20 pounds of this middle aged fat that’s been creeping up on me over the past several years. I’m a dessert freak – that’s the best part of dinner! But when I’m ready to take that big step toward a new diet, I want a medically sound and gradual weight loss program – nothing extreme.

The website called “weight loss diet help” has overviews of most of the top weight loss and diet programs so you can learn about the different types of programs before choosing one. This site reviews Medifast, NutriSystem, Weight Watchers – all the top popular programs. They even review the Jillian Michaels program – the one who does the “Biggest Loser” TV show. Each of the reviewed programs has links to the program’s own web site and money savings coupons.

This website is a good place to start if you want to find the best plan for your needs whether you are looking for help with weight management, healthy living, cholesterol lowering or hypoglycemia. They also have some great articles with tips on the different aspects of dieting. I like the one titled, “How to Stop the Exercise Excuses.”

A “Go-To” How-To

Came across another “How-To” website tonight that looks promising, called Quamut. It’s a new internet venture by Barnes and Noble, completely different from any of their bookselling efforts. This site has professionally written articles on a variety of topics similar to a Wiki that you can read online free, but if you want to download the article for a printed reference that you can keep there is a small charge.

Each day there is a different download available free, so that is good incentive to keep coming back to the site every day. Today’s free download was about exterior painting. I grabbed that and put it on the wife’s desk. We’ve known for months that the exterior of the house needs a fresh coat of paint. This lets her know that we can do it ourselves if she’s willing, and we’ll save some money as long as we plan for a couple of days when the weather will be not too hot and not too much wind to paint.

Watercooler Stories

Today was one of the most unproductive days at work that I can remember. Everyone was so exhausted from a busy Memorial Day weekend, that we went through coffee in the break room like string through a duck. Everyone spent an enormous amount of time walking back and forth from their desks to the coffee machine or hanging around the breakroom chatting. I wonder if anything got worked on other than reading emails and opening mail.

My secretary had one of the most exciting weekend stories to relate. She had met up with some guys that invited her to ride in the Rolling Thunder procession in downtown DC. She said it was thrilling to be a part of thousands of motorcycles thundering down Constitution Avenue Sunday afternoon.

She has been slowly getting over her divorce and back into the dating scene and was telling me about how much she likes online dating versus going out to bars to meet people. She started with a site that has a list of all the top singles and personals sites once she made up her mind to look for a dating service. This site had reviews of each dating site so she could get an idea of the process.

I’m sure by now everyone has seen the TV commercials or heard about the eHarmony site. They are oriented toward long term, serious relationships and marriage. She says that was too deep for what she wants right now.

Fresh coming off a divorce, she was more interested in just meeting people and having fun, so she wanted a more casual site, like Yahoo Personals. She found a lot of guys locally and read through dozens of profiles before setting up her own profile and starting an email relationship with them to get started. she’s traded emails with a few and even met a few, but she says she felt pressured to move too quickly and was uncomfortable with the motives of the guys she met through Yahoo.

But then she tried LavaLife and that site really clicked for her. She’s been on 3 dates with different guys that she met through that site and she says that this is the one site where she is comfortable with the type of guys and the process of sending a smile to each other before getting too deep into each other’s heads. She says it’s more natural and more like real life and that’s where she met the veteran who invited her to the Rolling Thunder ride.