Travel: Hotwire , Orbitz , Orbitz (gay travel section) , Priceline ( $10 air coupon (exp. 10/31/02)) , Priceline (rental cars) Priceline (hotel rooms) , Priceline Vacations ( $25 coupon exp 10/31/02 ), USAHotelGuide , Site59 (one of my best recent travel finds!), Trip.com (for travel booking and a great flight tracking system) , Enterprise
Misc. Stuff: Overstock.com ( ), LuggageOnline ( take $10 off orders over $135 plus free shipping; enter code 'OCTTEN' at checkout; exp. 10/31; excl. Tumi ), American Express ( Get 10,000 SkyMiles with the Gold Delta SkyMiles Card ) ( Cash Rebate Card ), Blue from American Express , Sierra Club , Buy.com ( 10% lower than Amazon.com on books plus free shipping or $15 off $150 or more (a favorite merchant of my friend Dirk), NewBargains.com (odd assortment of stuff), FragranceNet , McAfee (antivirus software), Mission Orchards (dried fruit assortments, gifts), Sierra Club , CVS (drug store), PostersFAST.com , International Male , Magazines , ShopForChange.com , UncommonGoods.com .
ACTIVIST STUFF
People For the American Way
Foundation
, a group fighting (among other things) the Christian Action Network's attempt
to label television shows as "HC" and Falwell's assertion of the Teletubbies
orientation.
AIRLINES
WN (Southwest Airlines)
is now serving ISP (MacArthur/Islip)! They're my favorite small airline.
WN Route map
, Rapid Rewards
Program
(simplest frequent flyer program around!).
Go
, a low-fare British airline. I have no first-hand knowledge of this carrier,
so please send me feedback. (From Craig in LGA (temporarily?): "I can
inform you that flying on GO throughout Europe is a very cheap and decent
option. I have flown to Switzerland and France etc many times with them (Usually
between 50 and 70 GBP. Ofcourse it is usually delayed, but not for long
(there are all the usual caveats when flying with a cheap airline.) You dont
get a ticket and it is mega easy to book on the website. You get cheap travel
(12quid return) on the Stansted Express from Liverpool Street Station in London
to the Airport and Stansted is brand new as you probably know, so it's easy
to use. I would really recommend it - they do give you an allocated seat
so there is no rugby scrum like on Ryanair. Thought you might appreciate the
opinion of a native.")
Frontier Airlines
, an alternate to UA out of DEN.
Re: VS (Virgin), I will never fly them again due to their
outrageously-low 5 kilo limit on carry-on luggage.
A
list
of just about any airline with a website.
Have an
airport code
you need to decipher?
Best Fares'
list of weekly airline specials
(posted Wednesday afternoons).
Icelandair
is a good source of reasonable fares to Europe from its American gateways.
AA
, AF
, BA
, CO
, DL
, HP
, KL
, LO
, NW
, SN
, TW
, UA
, US
, VS
CAR RENTALS
WN
's partner's Alamo
, Budget
, Hertz
, and Dollar
. Out & About
gave Budget & Hertz very poor ratings (D- and F, in fact), BUT they
let a #1 Club Gold member have his/her DP added to the rental without an additional
fee. Hertz (allegedly) requires a flight on WN to get your WN half
flight credit. Go
here
for the complete ratings.
ENTERTAINMENT / MOVIES / MUSIC
A wonderful British comedy/drama,
Antonia and Jane
(I've seen it about fifteen times).
My John Waters movie favorites:
Serial Mom
and Lust
in the Dust
.
Try albums from, um,
Ms. Tourette
and
Eartha Kitt
.
Try these sound clips:
"With One Look"
from Sunset Boulevard,
"To Be Loved By You"
from Wynonna Judd (even if you don't like country, listen to this
one - Brian!),
"Queen of Denial"
from Pam Tillis, and
"The Girl Friend of the Whirling Dervish"
from For The Boys.
Barry Humphries
Wired
, Dame Edna info!
A page of
Dame Edna Everage links
.
Rotten Tomatoes
(movie reviews), Moviefinder
, Film.com
, Cartoon World's Greatest
Cartoons
, Reel.com
Blue Mountain Arts'
Electronic Greeting Cards
are a fun, paperless, and postageless way to say Happy Thanksgiving
AstroMate
, a Dating & Matchmaking site that uses astrology.
TEXAS Sunsets
FINANCES
Tax forms
, The Universal Currency Converter
, The Motley Fool
, FreeATMs.com
, The National Fraud Information Center
, IRS
, Visa-ATM
locator
FOOD & WINE
Trader Joe's
, my favorite food store chain. If I could only shop in one food store
the rest of my life, this might be it. It's like a gourmet store (without
the Dean & DeLucca price tag), health food store (with fun stuff like
Triple Ginger Snaps), and a grocery store (milk, butter, bread, pasta).
I buy - in quantity - their Smoky Black Bean Dip, Organic
Blue Corn Chips, Strawberry Soy Milk (it really is tasty!), Organic
Mango Passion Granola, and Olive Oil Potato Chips with rosemary.
Peter is impressed with their cheese pricing and selection (although certainly
not as impressive as Zabar's for the cheeses).
Marshall's Farm
Natural Honey
. Linda (SFO) and Peter's (LGA) sister Carol (ORF) introduced me to Lavender
Honey, which I thought was wonderful. I also had the Manzanita
and the Fairfax, both delicious as well; I thought the Eucalyptus was
unusual.
Fetzer
makes one of my favorite Gewurtztraminers - and it's cheap!
A marvelous spice
catalog from Wisconsin
.
Bella Viva Orchards
, a nice nut & dried fruit place which sells stuff sometimes at the
farmer's market north of the Ferry Terminal in SFO.
This South African winery
makes a powerful Merlot.
I found Wine Spectator's
website
to be handy.
Navarro Vineyards
makes the best damn grape juice I have EVER tasted! It's from the
grapes used to make Gewurtztraminer wine. MMMmmm...
Julia Child
Uncensored
(I really don't know how I happened upon this one, but it's a hoot).
Zagat
(I hesitated to include this since the reviews are based on the general
public's taste; e.g., Roettelle, A.G. in New York (where I'm a regular)
got the same rating of 18 out of 30 for food as Gold Coast Dogs in Chicago.
Oy...).
Thompson-Morgan
, in case you want to grow your food from seed (they have a WONDERFUL catalog).
Tofu
!
Epicurious
, CuisineNet
(good place to place your two cents' worth (and read others $.02),
The Gallery of Regrettable Food
, Häagen Dazs®
(P.S.: what ever happened to Frusen Gladje (sp?)?),
Seaview
(makes a very unusual sparkling red and a pleasant, more conventional
sparkling white)
GAY STUFF...
Human Rights Campaign
, which has a
list
of employers with domestic partnership policies.
A RuPaul
page!
PlanetOut
, a good gay site for news, travel, radio, etc.
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance
Against Defamation's (GLAAD)
website.
Human Rights Campaign's
list of employers
which have domestic partnership policies.
A gay/gay-friendly
real estate agent referral service
.
The
Advocate
, Gayellowpages
, a Matthew Shepherd
tribute, Rainbow Icon Archive
(a little pink and black triangle history, etc.),
PrideNet
,
Magazines
, The National Database of
Lesbigay Resources
, Draghag
(don't remember what this was all about, so y'all get back to me on that),
Global Ab Fab Page
, Gay.com
, East European Gay
Culture
,
Polish Gay Press
, Queer Legal Resources
on the Net
, QGLU
(Queens Gays & Lesbians United (Queens, New York, that is)),
CampCamp
And in case you really want to know the hanky code (most of you probably don't).
GEEKY STUFF (I say it with love...)
MediaBuilder's
FreeFont library
, Screen Saver Heaven
, more screen savers
, Norton
(antivirus software),
HEALTH
"Exercise on the fly"
(airport (or near-airport) fitness facilities/gyms)
If you haven't been to the new location (as of 1996) of
Rainbow Grocery
in SFO, you should! They're out of that rat's hole in the Mission.
The Vitamin Shoppe
's website. Many locations in the New York City area and good sales.
The 4th Street Food
Co-op
in the East Village left a lot to be desired for service. One can
only go to so much trouble for granola!
HOTELS
Specials from
Intercontinental
, Holiday Inn
, and Radisson
.
LIVE CAMERAS
Zakopane,
Poland
.
LUCINDA-ESQUE SITES
AncientSites
.
Find out how Congress Voted
.
Project Gutenberg Index
.
Aztec Calendar
.
MEDIA
The New York Times
, Comedy Central
, Yahoo's Internet Life
magazine, San Francisco Bay Guardian
, TVNow
, PBS
, The Mountain Astrologer
(great astrology magazine), Weekly
World News
(similar to the National Enquirer),
Oh the Humanity!
The Worst Movies on Earth, Texas
Monthly
magazine (well, you can't say this page doesn't have a range!)
Lots of
newspaper links
.
NEW YORK
Citysearch New
York
(good general guide), Jackson Heights
(a significantly Indian-populated area with some nice, old buildings from
the 1920s)
Probably New York's best gay/lesbian newspaper. Their
Out & About Calendars list such groups as the Times Squares (gay square
dancing), RAZEM (for Polish gays), and the Jewish Leather Group.
The MTA
, New York's bus, subway, and commuter train agency,
Demographic maps
of the city, PATH trains
to/from New Jersey, HX
, one of the gay magazines in New York - a trashy little rag, but, well,
their personal ads are how I met Peter! :-)
The Metropolitan Museum
of Art
, Time Out New York
, a good guide to what's happening in NYC,
Yahoo NYC
,
JAM Specialty Envelopes
& Paper
, a nifty store with pretty good selection,
Port Authority
(in charge of airports among other things),
Olympia Bus
(to/from EWR), The City of New York
, contains traffic and parking information, like
street cleaning and parking meter holidays
! (which apparently you can't really trust. Peter got a ticket for
parking on a date which was listed as a holiday on their site, but they refused
the appeal; they had changed the year to 2000, but had not changed the
dates. Jackasses.)
REFERENCE
Urban Legends and Folklore
: Thinking about forwarding an e-mail that may be a
hoax, urban legend, etc.? Go here
to research the topic of it and (probably) find the truth about it.
RefDesk
is fantastic: common grammar mistakes, an Aztec calendar,
atomic clock, units of measurement converters, and many, many more
inks.
Internet Public Library
Get OFF mailing lists and save trees! An
Experian link
to information on lowering junk mail levels (besides contacting magazines,
catalogs from which you buy, and credit card companies).
How far is it?
Determine the distance between two cities.
BigBook
, an online yellow pages. Handy for searching for, say, restaurants
in the 94114 zip code with the detailed search function;
Netscape's White Pages
and WhoWhere
are two places where you can try to find individual's addresses & phone
numbers, University of Texas' (the one in Austin, I think)
map collection
(quite good), Zip2.com
is one of the better sources for getting a map of an area around a specific
address.
Flags of All Countries
, International Salary
Calculator
, DialABC
(figures out whether your phone number spells anything),
Tenant.net
, Direct Marketing
Association
(print, fill out and send a form to lower the amount of junk mail sent
to you), http://www.ipl.org/
SHOPPING
Priceline , USAHotelGuide , Site59 (one of my best recent travel finds!), GiftCertificates.com , CoolSavings (one of my best sources of online shopping discounts), MuseumShop.com , LuggageOnline , Cartica (maps), American Express (they offer a Delta SkyMiles Card , often with very good bonus mile offers), McAfee (antivirus software), Mission Orchards (dried fruit assortments, gifts), Astrology (order charts), OurHouse.com (hardware and home things; associated with Ace hardware), PostersFAST.com , Magazines , CDNow , BooksNow , and ShopForChange.com . Better Business Bureau . Amazing Bargains
Northern Sun Merchandising is where I used to buy some of my leftist-themed t-shirts, buttons, and bumper stickers during high school in Cobb County, Georgia. Oh, yeah, I fit in REAL well there... Here are some of their products: buttons: "Atheism is a non-prophet organization", "333 The sign of the Semi-Christ", "It's in to be out", "PEACE AT HOME battery not included", "Breast fed is best fed"; bumperstickers: "Militant Agnostic. I Don't Know & You Don't Either", "If Going to Church Makes You a Christian, Does Going to the Garage Make You a Car?".
MISCELLANEOUS
Findagrave (hey, I said Miscellaneous). I found Rosalind Russell's Grave here.
Banned Books , Infiltration.org ("the zine about going places you're not supposed to go"),
Flags courtesy of ITA 's Flags of All Countries .