I have a deep love for large aquatic animals. A love so deep that I yearn to get up close to them. If I had been born in a different generation I would have no qualms about visiting Seaworld ( http://bit.ly/2somqNI ) but since I never went in my childhood and am now a fan of the documentary “Blackfish” as well as the memoir “Beneath the Surface” ( http://bit.ly/2sTwKRc ), that is no longer an option for me.  With that being said; whale watching out on the open ocean is the only available option. Luckily for me I found a spot not too far away where such a thing was taking place. Thus it landed on my 2017/2018 to do list ( http://bit.ly/2u0g9db ).  Whale watching from the shores in NYC seems too good to be true. I know they are many whale watching tours on the Eastern seaboard further north like Connecticut, Massachusetts, and even Maine. Finding this activity so close to home was like receiving a gift. But I had heard a lot about it and saw that ...

I firmly believe that if you don't whole heartedly love yourself there is no way you can really love anyone else. Without any self-love all there is, is hate. Hate for yourself, hate for others, and as we all know by now love trumps hate every single time.  Last year about this time I posted all about the pride we must have in ourselves ( http://bit.ly/2ugsqJv ) no matter who we are.  This year I decided I had to attend the NYC Pride March. I actually had wanted to attend before this but the dates never seem to work out. This year I made sure they did.  I began my morning by getting on the train and eating a vegan protein bar. This is the difference between being under or over thirty years old. Those under were probably already pregaming.  I got out at Union Station where I was surprised to see so many people out there getting their sales pitch hustle on; trying to sell as many rainbow flags, pins, practically anything with a rainbow on it th...

Sure I like going to the movies it just doesn't happen that often. Mainstream films tend to be a swing and a miss for me most of the time. I don't have patience for romantic comedies that all end the same way nor do I get behind the infantile humor of movies like “The Hangover.”   I prefer true stories ( http://bit.ly/2sDCpcq ), documentaries, or intellectual films that have original ideas and change the way you look at life. So you can see why my visits to the movie theaters tend to hover around one or two a year. However this year I was invited to attend the Brooklyn Film Festival and that had my attention right from the start. Despite having the Tribeca Film Festival close enough to my backyard I have never attended. Sadly I didn't even know Brooklyn had its own film festival until this year and it has been going on for over twenty years! I was stunned to learn this. Moi, not knowing something about her own borough?! I never thought that was a pos...

By now anyone who has seen or even heard about my blog knows I love a good meal. It is one of the things I live for in life. But sometime my body just doesn't want to cooperate. Now I am learning the cause may be the result of a little known bug. The Lone Star Tick was first discovered in the 1700s, the allergy to what is commonly called Alpha Gal (galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose) was discovered in 2009. An Alpha Gal allergy causes your body to overreact to such foods by flooding your system with antibodies, thus making you sick.  Alpha Gal is also known as MMA (Mammalian Meat Allergy) due to the foods that induce the illness brought on by this allergy.  National Geographic said it best: "You're walking through the woods, and that tick has had a meal of cow blood or mammal blood," explained Cosby Stone, an allergy and immunology fellow at Vanderbilt University. "The tick, carrying Alpha-Gal, bites you and activates your allergy imm...