Friday, December 17, 2010

5 For Friday

This has been a busy week and unfortunately the weekend looks to be really busy too, so I'm not really sure when I'm going to get some time to rest, but I'm looking forward to Christmas and having my parents visit us for the holiday next weekend.

1. Tuesday night we finally got our Christmas tree. If you're not in New York City, you may not realize how we buy our trees out here. There are Christmas tree stands all around the city on the sidewalks. Companies set up for the entire month of December and are open 24 hours a day. There is always at least one person camped out watching the trees and selling them - huge and tiny - to New Yorkers. We have found that there is a distinct lack of stands downtown so we purchased ours from a stand across from Woody's office. In midtown. We brought it home on the bus. It was still rush hour!

 bringing it home

we still have work to do, but at least it has lights!

2. White Christmas is my favorite Christmas film. I know Holiday Inn was really the film where Bing Crosby sang "White Christmas" for the first time, but the foursome of Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen is legendary. They're amazing together. I love Bing Crosby's voice and demeanor plus, he will always remind me of my Grandfather. The other day I was tipped off to this new video on FunnyorDie.com. Will Ferrell and John C Reilly did a remake of a classic video of Bing Crosby and David Bowie singing "Little Drummer Boy" So, for your viewing pleasure...


And click HERE for the remake

3. This weekend, starting today, is a special holiday market for the Hester Street Fair. Good thing is that it's not outdoors! My one gripe is that the fair (a market, really) is in a space on the LES that is much to small for the amount of people it draws each week. This was it's first year though, so hopefully next year they'll be able to make it a bit easier to move around. This one is going to be indoors and I hope it's big enough! Grace, Kether and I are meeting up Sunday afternoon to partake in a little shopping and girl talk! I guess that will be a chance for me to relax after all! Go HERE for the details.

4. Since a lot of people travel for the holidays I thought it would be a good time to share these two lists with you. The first is a list of hotels that you should stay away from! According to tripadvisor.com, THESE are the dirtiest hotels in the country. On a much better note, THESE are the best hotels in the country, so go ahead and book that much deserved vacation!

5. On a consumer awareness tip, Dannon has agreed to pay $21million to settle State and Federal investigations into the marketing of their popular yogurt, Activia and yogurt drink DanActiv. You've seen the ads where they make health claims that the yogurt helps settle GI issues and promotes the "Activia Challenge". Well, turns out there isn't clinical proof and now they will have to get FDA approval before they market the products in such a way. I'm wondering, have you ever tried this yogurt? Did you buy it because of these claims?

Have you reached all the goals you set this year?
Enjoy the weekend!
************
today's workout -
50minutes/5.75miles elliptical
3x10 straight front arm raise
stretching

6 comments:

Unknown said...

I love that you brought your tree home on the bus! That's fantastic :)

Running Ricig said...

You brought Christmas to public transit!

Rose @ Eat, Drink, and Be Meiri said...

When I set my goals last December, I was a little too ambitious. I was aiming for speed (a sub-20 5k) and distance (run a marathon). I managed to knock out 2 marathons, but that meant not training for speed. So, I'm switching gears, and 2011 will be the year of the Fast Rose. I hope.

Detroit Runner(Jeff) said...

Wow. The things you don't think about if you were thinking of moving to New York. I'm not but I love your posts about New York. I really need to visit there. Christmas in NY sounds just awesome! By the way, I'm reading Meb's book now too. Great read so far.

Tropical Eats said...

LOVE White Christmas!!! :)

you guys seriously are too cute taking that on the bus with you. Didn't know the tree shops were open 24/7!

That's NUTS about Dannon. You gotta wonder about companies and their claims!

Lindsay said...

i've had activia once, but not for those claims. i did have some #2 issues later that day but who knows it could have just been "time" and not necessarily the yogurt.

i didn't know that about the trees either! down here there are some tree lots around town and of course we can go out into the country and chop one down ourselves. i learned last weekend that trees in boston are cheaper than down here. that was kind of weird to me.