| The Valentine month brings its own garden chores
Valentine's Day is fast approaching, and everyone needs ideas for that special someone. If the recipient is a gardener, then think about giving a basket full of seed packets or garden gadgets, and be sure to include the chocolate heart on top! .
Wife of Spears' Paparazzo Pal Separates
In recent weeks, Ghalib has been seen accompanying Spears on shopping excursions, restaurant outings and trips to the courthouse in her custody case with ex-husband Kevin Federline. Ghalib is said to work for the photo agency FinalPixx. An after-hours call to the agency wasn't answered Tuesday.
Ghalib told the syndicated television magazine show "The Insider" on Tuesday that he had photographed Spears for several years before they grew closer in late December. He said their relationship blossomed after Spears was released from a hospital following a standoff in her home when she refused to return her two sons to Federline's bodyguard.
"We managed to spend a long time together, away from the media," Ghalib said.
In another interview with the TV show "Entertainment Tonight," Ghalib denied accusations that he was profiting from his relationship with the 26-year-old pop star.
NYC, the NYPD, the RNC, and Me
Back then, I suggested that the RNC gave New York's "finest," a perfect opportunity to "refine, perfect, and implement new tactics (someday, perhaps, to be known as the 'New York model') for use penning in or squelching dissent. It offered them the chance to write up a playbook on how citizens' legal rights and civil liberties may be abridged, constrained, and violated at their discretion." Little did I know how much worse it could get. No Escape Since then, the city's security forces have eagerly embraced an Escape From New York-aesthetic -- an urge to turn Manhattan into a walled-in fortress island under high-tech government surveillance, guarded by heavily armed security forces, with helicopters perpetually overhead. Beginning in Harlem in 2006, near the site of two new luxury condos, the NYPD set up a moveable "two-story booth tower, called Sky Watch," that gave an "officer sitting inside a better vantage point from which to monitor the area." The Panopticon-like structure -- originally used by hunters to shoot quarry from overhead and now also utilized by the Department of Homeland Security along the Mexican border -- was outfitted with black-tinted windows, a spotlight, sensors, and four to five cameras.
Broncs buck Scarlet Knights
PISCATAWAY Jason Thompson did not kill the Rutgers University men's basketball team Friday night. Everybody else on Rider did.
The Scarlet Knights limited the NBA-bound big man to a season-low 12 points, but a driving layup by guard Harris Mansell broke a tie with 38 seconds left as Rider prevailed 61-57 before a crowd of 4,106 at the Louis Brown Athletic Center. Playing without freshman guard Corey Chandler, who is out 1-2 weeks with a foot injury, Rutgers got bogged down offensively and failed to take advantage of serious foul trouble for Thompson and his smaller but talented brother Ryan. Jason Thompson, a 6-foot-11 All-America candidate, picked up three first-half fouls and wound up shooting 6-of-15 from the floor while grabbing seven rebounds. Ryan Thompson, a 6-6 junior guard, picked up the slack with 19 points and nine rebounds before fouling out with 2:52 left.
Some of my best friends are cyberpenguins
One of the most valuable, yet bewildering, facets of parenthood is that it often makes you feel as if you have pressed an existential "fast forward" button. Everything seems to happen so quickly. Personally, I feel as if I am still learning to breathe my way through that first contraction, but no. Here I am with a four-year-old and a seven-year-old, already, and the four-year-old wants her own Frank Sinatra CD "because you godda love Frank", and the seven-year-old wants her own e-mail address, so she can join Club Penguin. Club Penguin is kind of like Second Life for kids - First Life, I guess, given that they haven’t really done much yet, except wobble their teeth around until they fall out. However, instead of being sexy avatars dressed in sexy Abercrombie & Fitch, who spend all day trying to have sex, as on Second Life, on Club Penguin the kids are just ovoid penguins in bobble hats, looking for fish.
Clement: Sizing up NHL’s toughest customers
Tough guys have to be able to play some hockey if called upon to do so. They have to hold their own on the ice when their fists aren't flying. The goons are gone from the NHL, but not the pugilists, who are around to protect and serve their teammates. Here are my super tough guys starting with a top five of all heavyweights, proving that size does matter when you're in the role of an enforcer. 1. Georges Laraque
6-foot-3, 243 pounds
Penguins
A veteran who has played since the late 1990s, Laraque sits in the king's thrown among the NHL's tough guys. It's like opposing enforcers bow at his feet before they drop the gloves with him. He fights less nowadays as is to be expected since he has developed so great a reputation that often his mere presence on the ice is enough of an impact.
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