Spring is Blooming is Women's Fashions

Well, it is still way too early for the very first signs of Spring, like the daffodils --but here a women's clothing store is looking ahead to Spring already ( as are many others, I guess).
Maybe jumping the gun a little? But look how Christmas starts being advertised right after Halloween now, with Thanksgiving (which is not such an important sales time except maybe for certain food products) just shuffled in there.

The Good Old Brownstone Stoop

Some people really LOVE the old "stoops" (front steps-- I presume "stoop" probably comes from the Dutch or something,  (I will have to google the entymology of that)-- anyway, just because they are such a tradition does not mean everyone sees them as a plus! Here are two similar buildings next door to each other in Murray Hill...one with old stoop there as always, the other where it they removed it and made the downstairs entrance the Main Entrance.
  I guess this is another example of that old saw, "You pays your money, you takes your choice."

How to lose your teeth...sip on Pepsi (or Coke)

Literature I have from NYU Dental School warns very explicitly against what this woman is doing...sipping on Pepsi and in effect bathing her teeth in a mixture of sugar and phosphoric acid. Great way to lose you teeth, folks.

If you have to drink Pepsi ( or Coke--by the way, Diet is no better, that phosphoric acid will get you on its own)--  do it in reasonable gulps ( not big gulps, which will give you gas and probably acid reflux as well). Then brush your teeth with an enamel fortifying toothpaste afterwards.

I am not the kind of person to ban any kind of food or drink ( Mayor Bloomberg has a Napoleonic complex about laying down any law he chooses --to ban large soft drink servings etc.--also effect of pompous billionaire surrounded always by squads of "yes-men")--but believe
people should know about the consequences they face. 

Oh yes, that snowstorm

Top:Woman wonders how to get around this sea of slush at corner...gingerly, I guess.
Bottom: Little girl wants to stay and play with snowman but mom says it is time to go...

AWESOME, DUDE

Read a funny blog journal posting by a young Irish world traveler who liked the United States in many ways while he was here, but was totally turned off by other aspects.

While I would disagree with his assessment of Americans as not "honest" enough ( he likes what he considers the honesty of Germans, say, who will tell you in no uncertain terms if they think you are too fat or are not smelling good--"Americans are too polite--too politically correct to tell you things like that," he says...)

But he is certainly right on with his dismay of American cliche words and phrases, and particularly a society in which it seems everybody and everything is "Awesome!"

I recently saw some pictures of the flight deck of the Endeavour space craft which were something way beyond what we usually see and were , for once, really awesome....

Blizzard, aches and pains

As I write this, first big snowstorm...well blizzard really...of the season is hitting the whole Northeast....NYC has all these plows and sand and salt trucks out...some of the trucks breaking down and getting stranded...

Was out today with terrible aches and pains ( doctor has no idea what it is...I went online and it is MAYBE Fibromyalgia --will have to keep tabs on it--but enough of this, aches and pains of geezers like me are not much fun to read about)

Must try this place out for the back and foot rub!! ( Midtown full of course with similar places).

Just signed up for Restorative and Meditative Yoga classes which I will begin as soon as weather allows...

Looks like NYC will get off relatively easy from this blizzard as compared to Boston...where they expect several feet of snow.

Will be out tomorrow to get some snow pix.

Stuyvesant Square

Stuyvesant Square ( down about Second Avenue and 16-18th Streets) is a place I have not been to in a long while...it has really improved for the better, which does not surprise me given the constant gentrification of Manhattan.

Note that parents now let their kids play alone to some extent in place where drug dealers used to hang out...however, St. Gaudens Playground up the Avenue still has very strict rules that adults can only be there to accompany children and often have a guard coming around to keep an eye on the place. This is still NYC, of course.