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If your nuptial dreams include a fairy-tale wedding, Walt Disney Co. might have the perfect solution.

The gowns, which will retail from $1,100 to $2,900, initially will be sold at one location in Central Florida. Solutions Bridal in Winter Park will carry the line.

Disney will initially offer 34 gowns, a line that will be expanded to include bridesmaid dresses, flower-girl dresses and jewelry in October.

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We all know what the world looks like. But a new series of extraordinary maps shows our planet in a very different light. Rather than defining each country by size, these computer-generated modified maps – or cartograms – redraw the globe with each country’s size proportionate to its strengths, or weaknesses, in a whole series of categories.

The cartograms were produced in a unique collaboration between the universities of Michigan in the U.S. and Sheffield. Here are images and more details on some of the most fascinating…

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Military Spending

War and Death

Toy Imports

Toy Exports

Some of you have emailed asking how am I feeling since I mentioned I was sick a couple days ago.  Well, I’m taking the day off work resting at home still feeling sick, but I think the worst has passed me by.   Hopefully I’ll be fully recovered for our flight on Friday and I won’t pass anything along to WifeGeeding or SisterGeeding.

However, sitting at home got me to thinking about this trip and life in general.  For instance, what if something happens to me, or to all of us?  Because of this thought I have spent most of this morning updating my beneficiary information and getting things in order.  Mom was either a partial or contingent beneficiary, and with her gone I needed to update this stuff.  Not to mention, I always wanted to get things together in case something happened that a person could pick up one folder and find all the information that they would need. 

The only regret I have is that I don’t have a will, and I don’t have time to actually get one together before the trip.  The one thing I did do, even though it probably would not hold up in court, is to make a statement regarding my wishes and sign it stating I’m doing this with clarity of mind and under no duress.   And maybe this post might somehow back that up since no one else has the username and password to this blog.

If WifeGeeding and SisterGeeding survive me, they will naturally get all my stuff.  But if they don’t survive me, then my only family other than the ones in Vietnam are pretty much two cousins in California, oh, and BrotherGeeding – and I don’t want him getting a single cent.  As a matter of fact, I want to make it that perfectly clear, I do not want him getting anything of mine after my death – period.

Why am I so hard on BrotherGeeding?  Well, basically he refused to talk to MomGeeding for the past three years of her life and cashed in as sole beneficiary on a large life insurance policy he took out on her a couple of months after DadGeeding died back in 1998.  He’s more than set financially, and doesn’t deserve any more.  I hope he finds what he’s looking for, and I know what he’s looking for isn’t monetary, I just don’t know if he knows that.

So now that I have that said, the only other wish I would like to make should something happen to me and someone decides to put together a funeral for my cremated remains is for a U2 song to be played.   I would like my favorite East Coast pastor to pick the song.

Sorry to be so morbid this morning, but just thought I need to air this out.

Homesick Texan

I am an expat Texan who has lived in New York City for over 11 years. And while I enjoy typical New York City nosh such as bagels, coal-oven pizza and smoked fish, nothing makes me swoon like a heaping plate of the foods I grew up with—Tex-Mex, BBQ and chicken fried steak. I have spent the past years scouring the city for tastes that remind me of home—sometimes successful, sometimes not. This blog is a record of my quest, and other food-related musings that befit a homesick Texan.

I really enjoyed this post titled Independence and Chicken-Fried Steak.

Makes me want to run to my favorite local restaurant.  Too bad I can only eat there once every two months, anything more and my heart would give out.