Saving Daylight

So have you managed to shake the effects of Daylight Savings Time yet? I totally missed an appointment yesterday, because the clock in my timeshare rental hadn't been set forward. Thinking I had an hour to spare, I went to one of these aqua massage booths to blow off some stress. Have you seen these things out at the mall or airport? They look like a cross between a tanning bed and an George Forman grill. It opens like a clam shell so that they can close the thing down around you, and you pay by the minute for an invigorating, pulsating, full-body massage. Now I know what you are thinking, whose going to take off all of their clothes and get a public water massage? Lot of people, unfortunately. But an aqua massage does not require that you take off anything but your shoes, and you don't get at all wet. In fact, the industry term for it is "dry water massage". I know that is bit like "light beer" or "meatless bacon," but the water jets are behind a thin membrane. So you get all of the benefits of a water massage, without the moisture. Perhaps they should have called it something else, but believe me when I tell you that your worries will just melt away. What was I talking about anyway? Oh yeah, DST.

So you've probably heard that DST was started by Ben Franklin, and that it has something to do with farmers. But that's all nonsense. If you think about it, why would a farmer care what time it is? They are about the last task-oriented group of workers left in the world. They are getting up when the sun (and the rooster) gets up, regardless of what it says on the clock. And as far as Franklin goes, he did write a satirical piece while in France, suggesting that they could save money on candles if they'd get up earlier when the daylight hours start to lengthen. In the same piece, he also suggested taxing window shutters, and waking the public at sunrise by ringing bells and firing cannons. He certainly never suggested changing the clocks by an hour.

No, the blame for that seems to fall squarely upon George Vernon Hudson, an entomologist from New Zealand who proposed the idea in the 1890s. That's right, a Kiwi bug collector wanted more time to search for creepy crawlies after his shift ended, and had the bright idea to move the clock to more closely align the increasing amount of sunlight with his availability. An English builder named William Willett made a similar proposal in 1905, because he was tired of seeing his after work golf game cut short by darkness. Are you seeing a pattern here? These are folks whose jobs required that they work against a clock, unlike a farmer. And if you are above or below the equator, the hours of sunlight shift as the seasons progress, but the time-clock doesn't. So where you used to have an hour or two to go look for bugs or that 7-iron shot that you hooked into the tree-line, you now found yourself in the dark. Literally.

But in the end, it would seem to be energy conservation that led to widespread adoption of DST. Perhaps this is why Franklin is often cited. He was, albeit humorously, suggesting that Parisians could simply get up a little earlier and do what they needed to do during daylight, and save a ton of money lighting the city with candles later on in the day. But it was not until the German WWI war machine instituted it as a way to save coal that the idea really caught on. Adjusting the clocks to maximum sunlight hours greatly reduced coal consumption for home heating, so that it could be used for a massive war effort. Russia, the UK, France, and the United States followed within the next year or two. In fact, European countries and their various colonial interests around the world are pretty much the only places that observe this practice.

On the face of it, it certainly makes sense in terms of saving on both lighting and heating costs, and anything that promotes more outdoor activity can't be all bad. But folks who already make their living outdoors (farmers, landscapers, etc.), and those that benefit from indoor activities (movie houses, theaters, etc.) don't really see it this way. And if you live near the equator, or very far from it, changing the clocks by an hour has little or no effect on the amount of daylight you experience.

So why do we still do it? Who can say. Some places don't. Several provinces in Canada do not participate, and neither does the state of Hawaii, most of Arizona, and parts of Indiana. That can create some real travel headaches. If you are going to Hawaii, it probably doesn't matter too much. You'll be spanning several time zones no matter where you are coming from, and will likely have spent all day in airports and on planes. There's almost no chance you are going to know, or care, what time it is when you finally touch down. But imagine if you are like a friend of mine, and you live in Illinois - 50 minutes from your job in Indiana. During DST, he gets to his job 10 minutes before he left home. Are you kidding me?! And I thought I had it bad with all of the traveling I do.

Well, I have to get to the deli and lay in about 20 lbs. of corned beef if I want to be ready for Sunday's big event. No, I'm not having a St. Patrick's Day party. I am competing in the 3rd Annual TooJay's World Class Corned Beef Eating Championship in Palm Beach Gardens, FL, and I've gotta work out if I want to be on the podium this year. I know, I know, I need to get a new hobby. Maybe I'll look into bug collecting after I recuperate.

Super Tuesday

I don't know about you, but I had been looking forward to yesterday since the first of the year, and it truly did not disappoint. No, I don't mean the Republican presidential primary. I'm talking 100 years of Oreo cookies. That's right, that famous sandwich of two chocolate wafers with creme in the center was born on March 6, 1912, at a Nabisco factory in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City. And life has been that much sweeter ever since.

Hey did you know that the first Oreo ever sold was in a grocery store in Hoboken, NJ? Yep, the city directly across the Hudson River from the Nabisco factory knew a good thing when they saw it, and made that famous sale. Hoboken was also the site of the first baseball game ever played (the whole Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown story is a myth), was the backdrop for the famous Brando movie "On The Waterfront", and the birthplace of Frank Sinatra, Eli Manning, and indie filmmaker John Sayles. Of course it was also the birthplace of Jon Corzine and Pia Zadora, so I guess it has had it's share of duds as well. I heard one time that Pia Zadora was in a production of The Anne Frank Story that was so bad, that during the final scene - when the Nazis burst into the house - the audience screamed out "She's in the attic!" Gosh I love that joke. What was I talking about?

Oh yeah, Oreo cookies... how could I forget? Do you know what the word Oreo means, other than delicious goodness? Neither does anyone else. Seriously. There are lots of theories and speculation, but even the folks at Nabisco are not really sure. Best anyone can figure is that it just sounded good. Of course it has gone through some rebranding over the years. To date, it has been known as the Oreo Biscuit (the original name), the Oreo Sandwich, the Oreo Creme Sandwich, and the Oreo Chocolate Sandwich Cookie. Its ingredients have changed as well. The original recipe had lard in the filling, which was then switched to partially hydrogenated oils (trans fats), and finally just non-hydrogenated vegetable oil. Boy, I wish I was alive 100 years ago (I wasn't) to have one of those lard Oreos. The design on top of the cookie itself has been tweaked and refined over the years, as well, but by and large it's the same cookie that debuted 100 years ago.

Over the years, additional products have been added to the Oreo line. Fore example, the Double Stuff Oreo - introduced in 1975 - has twice as much filling as a regular Oreo. Too sweet for my tastes. I think the ratio of filling to cookie is just right in the original. It would be like doubling up on the McCartney and not the Lennon, if you know what I mean. The Triple Double, introduced in 2011, is a whole other kettle of fish. That's three wafers with both chocolate and original creme between. Those babies are 100 calories each folks. Keep that in mind the next time you knock back a sleeve of them while watching Jersey Shore. You can't have a 100th anniversary without a commemorative edition, and Nabisco recently began sales of the limited edition, sprinkle-filled birthday Oreo. A bit of a disappointment if you ask me, but heck, it's still an Oreo, and they go down.

Of course nothing lasts forever. The Hydrox reigned supreme as the creme-filled chocolate cookie of record prior to the Oreo. They finally went out of business in 1996. Should Americans ever lose their taste for the Oreo (not likely), sales of them have begun to take off in China. They tweaked the recipe to be not so sweet, and they've become the best-selling cookie in China. There are 1.4 billion people in China, in case you had forgotten.

Well, I am heading back (with some Oreos) to my timeshare rental on beautiful Tybee Island, GA. There is another 100th birthday going on in Savannah, GA, just about 20 miles from here. On March 12, 1912, Juliette Gordon Low began the Girl Scouts of the United States America from her home, which is now the Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace and museum. I plan on touring it, and the site of the first-ever headquarters of the GSUSA. I'm told the scouts have also branched out into the cookie business. Sounds like some field research is in order. Man, I love my job.

A Flying Leap

So what would you do if you had one extra day this year? I guess that's a silly question, since that day is upon us, and clearly you are blowing it reading my latest entry. But no matter how you cut it, there will be 366 days this year, rather than 365. Remember that between now and December 31st when you find yourself about to say "If I just had one more day, I'd..."

It all comes down to the fact that a full trip around the sun takes the earth 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 16 seconds. So every four years, or thereabouts, you pick up an extra day. So we add that day, called a "intercalated" every leap year. Before the calendar was switched from Roman to Gregorian (about 2000 years ago), the lack of this "leap day" correction would cause the seasons to eventually misalign. So if you lived long enough, it would be snowing in July. Of course if you live in Vermont, that happens anyway. But I digress.

So the adding of this day does create some weird situations, not least of which is birthdays. I guess it would be a lifelong icebreaker to have your birthday happen only once every four years. And you do get to pick your birthday in all of the non-leap years (Feb. 28th or Mar. 1). But those are about the only positives I can think of. Maybe that is why it is considered bad luck in some places to be born on this day. On the upside, you get a standing invitation to join The Honor society of Leap Year Day Babies, whatever that is. The chances of making this club are 1,461-to-1, which is pretty exclusive. But if you want to really up the ante, have a kid also born on leap day. Know what the odds are on that one? Try more like 2 million-to-1. And then there is the curious case of the Keough family of Ireland. The Guinness Book of World Records acknowledges this family as the only one to ever have three generations in a row with children born on February 29th. And these were not scheduled C-sections, like some people will do, but three natural births all on leap day. Of course, Ireland is one of the aforementioned places where this is not considered a good thing. Needless to say, the current generation of Keough's are hoping to have this tradition die with them.

Of course there are always fun traditions that spring up around these types of events. One such example is women proposing marriage to men, or ladies' privilege. If you are as old as I am, which may not even be possible, you'll remember this as Sadie Hawkins Day from the Li'l Abner cartoon strip. Sadie was the "homeliest gal in all them hills" in the fictitious town of Dogpatch. With her 35th birthday rapidly approaching, her Dad cooked up a scheme to keep her from spinsterhood (and out of his house). He proposed a foot race between all of the eligible bachelors in town, and his daughter Sadie. He fired his gun and gave them a running start. The first bachelor that Sadie could run down, had to marry her. The lessons learned here are that homely girls are often faster than they look, and don't ever agree to marriage based on the outcome of a foot race.

There is even a town - Anthony, TX - that has claimed the moniker of Leap Capital of the World. I guess they only feel like having a festival every four years. But when they do, they pull out all the stops, and this town of less than 4,000 welcomes visitors from all over the world. Most of them are born on leap day, or have family members that are. But I don't think they check IDs. You can get a timeshare rental in neighboring New Mexico and make it part of a Southwest, quadrennial getaway.

Well, I am off to don my blue and yellow Leap Day clothing and poke people in eye who are not wearing theirs. What, am I really the only person left who watches 30 Rock?

King for a Day

So did you have some fun on Mardis Gras and get all of your naughty behavior out of your system before hunkering down for the lenten season? Yeah, me neither. I totally did the Fat Tuesday part, but not so much on the lenten hunkering down. The way I see it, I'm not even two months into breaking my New Year's resolutions - not to mention my Chinese new Year's resolutions - and adding more bricks onto the load is just setting myself up for failure. But I did pick up one new obligation out of this carnival season, which I will absolutely honor. I was the recipient of the baby trinket in my piece of king cake, making me king for a day and putting me on the hook for making next year's king cake.

You have no idea what I am talking about, do you? That's okay, neither do I most of the time. But when it comes to cake, as you may well know, I am totally locked in. The king cake is a traditional sweet in the Christian tradition, and is typically associated with the three kings' visit to the baby Jesus on the twelfth night after his birth - also known as the Epiphany. However, as immigrants from Spain and France brought Catholic traditions with them to the New World, the cake began making appearances in the pre-lenten festivals of Carnival and Mardis Gras. The composition of the cake varies, but it is usually a ring or a braid, similar to a cinnamon roll. The king cakes of the Gulf Coast are typically covered in a sugary icing in the yellow, green and purple colors of Mardis Gras, and have a hidden trinket inside or underneath them. Sometimes the trinket is just a bead, like those thrown from the parade floats, but more often than not, it is a small figurine of a baby. The person who gets the piece with the trinket is the king (or queen) for the day, and now has to provide the cake for the following year's celebration. Some regional variants suggest that the recipient is going to have a baby in the next year. So unless you know something I don't, it looks like I have 364 days to figure out how to make one of these things.

Of course I could just buy the thing online and have it delivered. Looks like I can get one for about $50 (including the baby) from Cannatas or Dianne's King Cakes. They both get great reviews and appear to be just like what I had at the king cake party. But it feels like cheating to me. Of course I travel for a living, and baking a cake on the road can be challenge. Not to mention that I cannot bake. But, I've got nearly a year to figure this all out, and I have to imagine that not fulfilling my obligation will be accompanied by some sort of voodoo hex. Just what I need.

I suppose if I want it to be super-authentic (and fresh), I could get a timeshare rental in New Orleans the week of Mardi Gras 2013. The Maison Orleans/Hotel de L'eau Vive has full-size kitchens and is within steps of the French Quarter, where I could score my ingredients. I don't see anything posted on RedWeek yet, but I'll sign up for a posting alert and keep it in the old tickler file. Hotel de L'eau Vive, by the way, translates into Hotel of the Living Waters in English, which I suppose is some sort of reference to indoor plumbing. But don't quote me on that one.

Ooh, I know. I can get one of the many New Orleans celebrity chefs to help me. I am sure John Besh, Emeril Lagasse, Paul Prudhomme, or Leah Chase have nothing better to do than to teach a rank amateur how to knock out a king cake. Hey have you ever noticed that you never see Dom DeLuise and Paul Prudhomme together? Okay, I know DeLuise died in 2009 and it is time for me to hang up that joke, but they really did look exactly like.

I guess a cookbook and some trial and error are in my future. This much I do know: my king cake is NOT going to have a baby in it. No sir. I am going with the Timeshare Ambassador action figure instead. That's right, ThatsMyFace.com will take a photo of my face and put it onto a 3D head that fits any 1/6th size action figure body. Now I just need to find a 1/6th action figure body of a portly older(ish) man in a Hawaiian shirt.

The Happiness Effect

If you're like me, and I really hope you're not, then you probably think that too much coffee is really bad for you. And if you are knocking back a pot or two of the stuff a day, you're probably right. But like a lot of folks, I tend to have a cup or two in the morning, and then another in the mid-to-late-afternoon. And I am not terribly good company when either of these things don't happen. So I've been operating under the assumption that a) I'm pretty much a coffee junkie, b) it was bad for my heart and my overall health in general. Turns out, I was wrong - about the b) part that is.

Several recent studies have concluded that coffee does elevate your blood pressure for a little while, but only by a few points, and that it quickly returns to normal (unless you have blood pressure problems to begin with). Moreover, filtered coffee does not lead to abnormal heart rhythms, stiffen your arteries, or raise your bad cholesterol numbers, despite what you may have read in the past. Furthermore, in moderation, coffee may in fact improve cognitive function, help the overall health of your heart, lower your risk of gallstones and colon cancer, and even improve the performance of endurance athletes. Plus, a Harvard Nurses Study recently revealed that a group of 50,000 women tracked over a period of 10 years experienced reduced levels of depression when regularly drinking coffee. They dubbed it "the happiness effect". Now I have about as much chance of being an endurance athlete as I do of being a woman, but they had me at lowered gallstone risk. Of course it is worth noting that if you regularly drink alcohol to excess, you negate all gains of drinking coffee. It's always something, isn't it?

Anyway, coffee has seen a major resurgence in this country the last few decades, and a great cup of joe is never too far away. Sure you can hit a Starbucks or other chain just about anywhere, but for money, there's nothing like a great local coffee-shop. And where there are great local coffee-shops, timeshare rentals cannot be too far away.

San Francisco, for example, has a robust coffee scene. There are so many great neighborhood java joints to choose from, but my favorite is Mario's Bohemian Cigar Store in the North Beach (Little Italy) part of town. Don't let the name fool you, this is a fantastic café and the coffee is out of sight. They haven't sold cigars in years, but back in the day, Jack Kerouac and the other beats hung out here and smoked and drank the night away. Of course Kerouac more or less drank himself to death, and as a result, didn't reap any of the heart benefits of Mario's brew. Rent a timeshare at The Inn at the Opera and take a nice evening stroll in this lively neighborhood.

For something completely different, try the southern hospitality of Charleston, SC. Now I know what you are thinking, a good cup of coffee in the Old South? Well, the fact is that coffee was first introduced to the New World in Jamestown, VA. And when war broke out with the British - and drinking their tea was out of the question - sipping coffee became a downright all-American thing to do. Charleston boasts some of the finest Revolutionary War era dwellings in this country, and some dynamite coffee spots. My personal favorite is the East Bay Meeting House in the French Quarter. Try a timeshare rental at the Church Street Inn. It puts you close to everything you want to see in this magnificent town, and never too far from a good cup of coffee.

Of course no tour du café would be complete without a stop in my old stomping grounds, Seattle. That's right, the home of Starbucks, Seattle's Finest, and about a million other coffee brands is now also home to a timeshare resort: The Camlin (WorldMark Seattle). This resort puts you right in the heart of the lively 6th and Pine shopping district. And if you find yourself in the famous Pike Place Market, and you should, be sure to check out the original Starbucks location, where it all got started back in 1971.

Well, I am off to try a cup of the world's most expensive coffee. Kopi Luwak coffee has been known to fetch as much as $160/lb! Why so pricey you ask? Well the Luwak, or Asian palm civet, is a ruminant peculiar to Indonesia, where it likes to eat ripened coffee berries (they are not really beans). Some while later, it wanders off into the woods, and "deposits" them. Gatherers then collect the berries, which are entirely intact, but with the outer hull completely removed by the civet's intestinal tract. They are then dried, roasted, and ground into one very expensive coffee. So I am going to pay about $12 bucks for a cup of coffee that was pooped out in some woods half way around the world by an animal I've never even heard of. I seriously gotta get some help.

Bitter Water

So have you ever eaten 100% pure chocolate? I don't mean semi-sweetened, baker's, or even dark chocolate. I am talking unadulterated pure chocolate? Well I'll save you the trouble if you haven't: it's nasty. Like eating a raw coffee bean, only more bitter. And don't get me wrong, I like a dark chocolate. I typically have a bar of 88% chocolate working at all times. But I inadvertently grabbed a 100% bar the other day at the market, and am wondering what to do with it now. I can't give it to the dog (toxic), and even the squirrels looked at me like I was nuts when I tossed it out in the yard for them to munch on. I guess I'll just leave it out there until I hit it with the mower later this spring.

Hey did you know that chocolate (known as cacao) dates back to at least 1900 BC? Yeah, it probably goes back a lot further, but evidence shows Mesoamericans eating it at least that far back. Later in the Aztec and Maya eras it was used not only as food, but as currency for paying tributes (taxes) to the high priests. Thing is, Mesoamerica lacked both milk fat and sugar. So they pretty much only knew the aforementioned pure version of what we consider a sweet. It's not surprising then that their word chocolate loosely translates to mean "bitter water" in our tongue. Even more peculiar, in its raw form it is inedible and can even be toxic to some people. The cacao pod is about the size of a football and is filled with a mucous-like slime and about 35 to 40 "beans". Yummy, huh? Once said pod falls off the tree upon which it grows, it needs to ferment in its own slime for a while. Then the beans are extracted from the glop, dried, and roasted. Only then do they become the inedibly "bitter water" the Aztecs so favored in food and beverage. Whoever figured all of this out was hungry, this much we know.

But like a lot of New World crops, cacao was taken back to the Old World and turned into something completely different. Outside of Spain, it has rarely made its way into savory cooking at all. Instead it was mixed with sugar and later milk (thanks to the Swiss) and considered a dessert. But it wasn't until the 1800s that a fellow named named John Cadbury (yes, that Cadbury) figured out a way to blend the ingredients in such a way as to make the solid bar we all know today. Why he wasn't knighted for this, I'll never know. I mean, if you are going to knight Paul McCartney and Elton John, isn't the inventor of the chocolate bar a no-brainer? I'll never figure the British out.

When chocolate came back to the Americas in its sweetened form, it was of course a big hit. Early U.S. chocolate factories had trouble keeping pace with the demand as more and more people acquired a sweet tooth for it. In 1894 a young man from rural Pennsylvania started just such a factory that would go on to make his name famous worldwide. I am of course referring to Milton S. Hershey, creator of the milk chocolate bar with his surname printed across the front of it. The Hershey Bar and the Hershey Kiss (invented in 1908) are probably two of the most iconic American candies ever brought to market. They've even made their way into outer space! Milton Hershey went on to lead the way in philanthropic endeavors as well, via The Hershey Trust Company and the Hershey School, both in the town bearing his name in Pennsylvania. You can visit both the Hershey factory and theme park from a timeshare rental at The Suites at Hershey.

On the west coast of the U.S. an Italian immigrant with a hard-to-pronounce last name opened a chocolate factory in San Francisco in 1852 that remains in operation today. Domingo Ghirardelli came to San Francisco in 1849 with dreams of finding gold and striking it rich. The gold part didn't pan out (see what I did there?), but like a lot of new immigrants, he took advantage of the boom and created a chocolate that has become famous the world over. He probably should have just called it Domingo's chocolate, but he wanted his last name on the bar, and to this day, Americans mangle its pronunciation. They ran an ad campaign for years with the phrase: "Say Gear-ar-delly!" but it didn't work, and almost no one gets it right. You can visit the factory in beautiful San Francisco from a timeshare at The Suites at Fisherman's Wharf; 2012 marks the 160th anniversary of the company and they have events planned throughout the year.

Well, I am off to Assumption Catholic School in Houston, TX to catch the latest stop of the Think Big, Eat Smart Tour. No it's not another eating contest (although I do have one of those coming up). It is a 60-city promotional tour that helps children understand the proper use of chocolate and confections in their diet, and it features the largest chocolate bar in the world, as certified by Guinness. This thing is 21 feet long, 3 feet high, and weighs in at 12,190 lbs. That's over six tons folks. Are you kidding me?! Of course if they wanted to teach children about proper portion size, you'd think they'd have a really, really, small one. Perhaps it wouldn't draw the same crowds, but it would certainly be a lot cheaper to lug around the country.

Are You Ready for Some... Chicken?

Well it's finally here, the most hyped day of the year (in America, anyway). It's Superbowl Sunday, and that can only mean one thing: chicken wings. That's right, the part of the bird most Americans normally don't eat at all will become the focus of a gorge-fest to the tune of 1.25 billion pieces, or 100 million pounds of chicken wings. Think about that for a moment, and really try to get your head around it. There of about 350 million people in this country, give or take. If my math is correct (it's probably not), that's 3.57 chicken wings for every man, woman, and child in this country. All on the same day. Are you kidding me?! If our civilization should happen to cease right at halftime, future archaeologists are going to have a bugger of a time explaining all those chicken wing bones lying around.

And if you think I'm making this up, I'm not. These stats all come from the Chicken Council's 2012 Wing Report. And I'm not making that up either. There's really an official report on this stuff. According to it, the aforementioned chicken wings laid end-to-end would circle the circumference of the Earth more than twice. And if you consider the fact that about 111 million people in the U.S. will actually watch the game, and therefore be eating said wings, it comes in at more like 11.25 wings each. Why not just make it a clean dozen, and call it dinner? But that's the thing. Apparently wings are not even at the top of the list of items that will be chowed down upon. No that title belongs to chips and dips. Potato chips alone will weigh in at approximately 28-30 million pounds, which if you've held a bag of potato chips, is just unbelievable. And according to the California Avocado Commission, Sunday will see enough guacamole consumed to cover the floor of the stadium from end-to-end to a depth of about 40 inches. Heck, they should skip the game entirely and just do that. I'd totally tune in to see that much guacamole in one place.

Of course the game itself took a backseat to the commercials, half-time show, and other meaningless hoopla a long time ago. So I guess one cannot be blamed for cutting loose, even if you don't really follow football. But maybe they should move it to Saturday or something like that. Consuming that much food - and the 50 million cases of beer that will be sold this weekend - has got to be hurting U.S. productivity come Monday morning, I would think. I am sure the Department of Labor has some special report on that as well, but I am afraid to look it up.

If you didn't manage to score tickets to the big game in Indianapolis (I didn't), you could do the next best thing: watch the game from a timeshare rental in the home city of one of the two teams. This year's game features a classic Northeast rivalry, with the New York Giants squaring off against the New England Patriots. Now these two teams don't often play one another, being in different leagues and all, but the baseball rivalry between the Yankees and Red Sox has fueled enough hatred to last a lifetime (and then some). They can't even agree on the clam chowder (chowdah for my Beantown friends), with Manhattan going with a tomato base and New England going with cream. Mixing the two is a bipartite - and delicious - solution to that problem, by the way.

Boston of course is home to Paul Revere's Ride, the Boston Massacre, the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Boston Tea Party, Bird vs. Magic, and so much more. You can rent a timeshare at Marriott's Custom House, located on Boston Harbor and within walking/metro distance to everything. You can watch the game from Ye Olde Union Oyster House, the oldest continually operating restaurant in America. They say that Daniel Webster, an Oyster House regular, frequently consumed six brandies and 36 oysters in a single sitting. Are you kidding me?! Talk about a power lunch.

New York City, of course, is the city that never shuts up (I stole that line from Ani DiFranco). I'm just kidding of course. I love the Big Apple, and a timeshare rental at the West 57th Street by Hilton Club will put you in the thick of it all. Tonic Bar in Times Square claims to be the largest sports bar in all of Gotham, with 25 super-sized plasma TVs. If you go, be sure to check out the Naked Cowboy on your way down there. You know about this guy? Yeah, he stands in Times Square playing a guitar wearing nothing but a cowboy hat and his tighty whities. Man he must get cold come winter time. Hope he doesn't break a g-string, if you know what I mean.

Well, I have to go pick my winner in the big office pool. Marbles looks very strong to me, but Penelope could be tough to beat. You are planning to watch Puppy Bowl VIII on Sunday, aren't you? Since 2003, Animal Planet has been airing a mock superbowl featuring puppies "playing football" in a miniature stadium, and it is the cutest darn thing you've ever seen in your life. Plus, all of the puppies are available for adoption. And unlike adopting an NFL player, they won't expect you to lavish them with expensive gifts and wild parties, or ransack your house in a steroid-induced rage. They might chew up your shoes and pee on your carpet of course, but who's to say a linebacker wouldn't do that as well?