New York City here we come!

I have been locating health food stores/restaurants in New York City, parking garages within walking distance of our hotel (located in the heart of Times Square) and printing countless maps to all the venues we will be attending when we head for our annual girl's jaunt into the city pre-Christmas.

And it is amazing how it has changed since even last year!  I love to walk, and I especially adore walking in the city, but all the maps that I have printed in the past were driving directions.  Last November, my friend Cheryl and I were walking to find a french fry restaurant that for some reason I NEEDED to go to, and it was like we were walking in circles, when we realized, duh, we're on one-way streets and these are driving directions.  

Well, now you can print WALKING directions, and how cool is that!  And not only that, but you can get satellite images of all the streets to check out what type of neighborhood you are venturing into.  For example, Cheryl and I hit a few streets that were a little SCARY and we both were basically holding our breath and looking for a few white faces for a few blocks.

It's kind of fun to play around with the maps and adjust the directions to find shorter routes, etc.  And because I didn't want to spend a ton of money to have my car valet parked from the hotel, I just did a search of parking garages and then figured out which one was closest to the hotel.  Get this, it would have cost $120 to have the hotel take my car a few blocks, and to do it myself it is $70!  Not bad, almost half price and the garage is literally a two-minute walk from the hotel.

Speaking of saving money, I heard a report on the news today that the price of gas could get below a dollar before the end of the year.  I just do NOT get it.  Nor am I even going to try.  What I really want to do is get really big tanks and fill them up with the cheap gas -- my own little stockpile if you will -- because of course it will go up again.  The report also stated that the negative aspect of these falling gas prices is that people will again start using as much as they did before, and not only will the demand increase, but we'll be right back at the position of battling for a dwindling resource.  So ... of course none of us will have learned our lesson and we'll be faced once again with the end of the world.

Oh well.