October 11, 2007
Poor little hyphens, the martini diet, plus unusual gift ideas
First, we just have to say that great as our recent trip to Africa was, it is always
great to be back home, especially when that home is New York City. The Three Tomatoes never, ever tire of that
first glimpse of the New York City skyline, and the adrenaline rush of just being back in the thick of it. Of course, you do have to
leave for more peaceful surroundings on occasion and then return to fully appreciate it, as you well know. Anyhow, we’re in a
random thought kind of a day, so here are a few things that are on our minds this week.
Bye-bye little- hyphen?
An article in the New York Times caught our attention this past Sunday about the latest addition of The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary eliminating some 16,000
hyphens, basically because they “confuse people and they’re just not sure how to use them”. So to
“simplify” they’ve eliminated the hyphen from compound nouns like ice cream, and hobby horse, and combined words like bumblebee
and pigeonhole.
Okay, so are you now as thoroughly confused as The Three
Tomatoes? We like hyphens (we’ve even given some of our children hyphenated names), and commas, and dashes too, as
you may have noticed. And we use them liberally, whether they’re called for or not. Although we do try not to abuse the
exclaimation point, and we actually hate the semi-colon, no doubt for some hidden psychological reason. But back to the poor,
perhaps soon- to- be extinct hyphen. (And yes, we know both of those last two sentences are fragments, at least according to Microsoft
Word but we don’t give a figs-leaf, aka figsleaf.)
We usually use hyphens when we’re not sure if a word is one or two, but we
for sure would have given the “bumblebee” the dignity of two separate words (with or without a hyphen.) And why is
flowerpot one word, but school bus is two? And yes, we have noticed that e-mail, has become email, unless you’re New York
Magazine which is holding on to the hyphen for dear- life. And what would happen to (:- face without the hyphen? No more cutesy
little sign off e-mails (oops emails). And for those of you who too are hyphen-users, the greatest hyphenator of all, according to the
Times article, was Shakespeare himself. So we’re in good company in-deed.
The Martini Diet
Image our joy when we discovered The Martini Diet, at the most
amazing new diet web site, Diettv.com. This may be the
most comprehensive diet web site ever! (Note our rare use of the exclaimation point.) First of all, it happens to contain just about
every diet you’ve ever heard of, including the commercial ones like Jenny Craig, and several you haven’t, along with nutritional advice
on each of these diets, exercise routines, diet tracking tools, a team of experts, videos, and social support groups. But
what’s really cool is it’s easy to use tool that helps determine the kind of diet you’d stick to and then based on your answers,
you get a listing of diets that match your preferences, which is how we found the Martini Diet.
Too good to be true? Turns out yes. While you can indulge in the
occasional martini, it’s all about putting your food into martini glasses (portion control), and a strict regimen of three meals a day of
almost any wonderful food you want, but in that martini glass portion. But what’s really cool is that with every diet plan, Diettv explains the diet, shows you sample menus, and has their
resident nutritionist weigh in on the diet, along with user comments too. It’s a really impressive web site
and a good way to get motivated to help loose a few pounds before the holidays and keep that dreaded resolution off your New
Year’s list.
Gift ideas for those impossible to buy for folks
Yes, we know it’s not even Halloween, but you know all those holiday shopping
ads are already in the can and ready to be sprung the day after Halloween if not before. It’s enough to get us hyperventilating just
thinking about trying to find those special gifts for all those hard to buy for people. So we were really excited when we found out about Signature Days, a really cool web site that sells memorable
experiences, in major cities across the U.S. For example, in New York City you can buy a sunset eco boat
tour of the more than three thousand herons that nest on tiny islands throughput NY Harbor, led
by an an Audubon naturalist for only $25 per person. Who knew? Or a 2 hour wine tasting
cruise in New York Harbor on an 82 foot Gatsby-era sail boat for $95 a person.
And those are just a few of the really unique gift “experiences”. Sure in heck beats buying those boring Brooks
Brothers ties again or yet another cashmere sweater.
Well that’s our random musings for this week.
‘til next week,
The Three Tomatoes
Copyright©2007. The Three Tomatoes. All rights
reserved.
