When you visit a large city with the intention of going touristy type things, you can spend a lot of money by the time the trip is over. I was born and raised in the DC suburbs and although the Smithsonian museums are free, when family would come into town and want to take tours and see alternate sites, the fees piled up faster than you might think.

It’s been years since I have been to New York City simply to see the sites. The past several times I have gone, it has been to see friends or to attend a specific plays starring an actor acquaintance of mine. Now that Gigi is pretty much old enough to travel with me and enjoy doing tourist-type activities, I am interested in planning another trip.

One of the most economical ways to plan a trip to NYC is to purchase a New York CityPass. What that is, is a booklet with tickets to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the new Greek and Roman galleries; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA); Guggenheim Museum; the American Museum of Natural History; a pass for the Empire State Building Observatory; and tour of the Manhattan skyline aboard a Circle Line Sightseeing Cruise. visit each attraction.

CityPass allows you access to all of the attractions I just listed at what amounts to a 50% overall discount. An adult pass is $65, where all of the tickets purchased individually would cost $130.

I haven’t been to the MOMA since 1987. 1987! Wow, that was a long time ago. I suppose I am more than due a touristy run of the city. And, I’ve never even bothered with the Circle Line before. That would be a lot of fun to do with Gigi.

I was wrong about the cake from last night. It was not a one-egg cake at all, but a classic 1-2-3-4 Cake.

I decided to post the recipe. For the fronting we used a typical butter cream icing, but for most or all of the liquid, we use fresh lemon juice. I like my frosting very tart.

Here are pictures of the cake I frosted (everyone else was too busy) and the one my daughter decorated for me. Her decorating is decidedly more colorful. She and I both went out to the back yard and cut some fresh roses for the cakes. I had trouble with the lighting on my photos, so it reality it was even more lovely than in the pics.

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, at room temperature
2 cups sugar
3 cups sifted self-rising flour
4 eggs
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Grease and flour 3 (9-inch) cake pans.

Using an electric mixer, cream butter until fluffy. Add sugar and continue to cream well for 6 to 8 minutes. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Add flour and milk alternately to creamed mixture, beginning and ending with flour. Add vanilla and continue to beat until just mixed.

Divide batter equally among prepared pans. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until done. Cool in pans 5 to 10 minutes. Invert cakes onto cooling racks.

We all know that when a model or a celebrity appears on the cover of a magazine, only apart of their appearance is based on their natural good looks. Once the photo has been taken, a team of talented graphic artists go in and do their magic: skin tones are evened out, thighs slimmed, unflattering shadows are zapped, colors corrected, and sometimes background images are even swapped. In the entertainment industry, photo enhancement is a fact of life.

We live in a digital age. Anyone with the right skill set can make the kind of changes I mentioned above. I am pretty skilled at Photoshop, for example. I have restored lots of old family photos, swapped out background for portraits I took of my daughter, and removed my fair share of blemishes from my own face in pictures. Even so, the learning curve for professional photo editing software is steep and the time it takes to do a really good, custom editing job is often long.

So, for all of you without the means to alter a photo, or for those of you without enough experience to do the big jobs, there is Fotofix.com. You can create a free membership profile on the site and they will fix your first photo for free. The system is simple. You upload a photo via your own computer or e-mail. Then, a professional artist works on your photos to your specifications. You can preview your finished product in a watermarked format and once the job is completed to your satisfaction, you then pay for the work.

Fotofix is for photos that need more than just a run through simple red-eye reduction software. I’m talking about a level of professional expertise utilized by celebrities and top pr agencies. This is the kind of service I would use if I took the perfect photo on my digital camera and I was unable to correct it well enough to use for a special portrait. I can only do so much on my own.

I took most of the day off from writing yesterday. While I was idle, we had a couple of news stories that were hot in my area. Both made the national wires, but right her in Florida they dominated.

It was perfect here yesterday. I did not see a single cloud in the deep blue sky. It was the perfect weather for the space shuttle to return, landing on the east coast. Sometimes I hear the sonic boom when shuttled re-enter our atmosphere, but I wasn’t paying attention so I missed it this time around.

Also, Hulk Hogan’s son Nick Bollea was charged here in the county jail yesterday. He was arrested abd brought into the Pinellas County jail in Clearwater on felony charges of reckless driving involving serious bodily injury.

Bolleas’s arrest stems from a car accident on August 26, when he was allegedly street racing Dodge Viper and lost control of his Toyota Supra. His car struck a curb, spun 180 degrees across traffic, and slammed into a palm tree. The car’s passenger, John Graziano, was critically injured.

Graziano, 22, has been deemed incapacitated, left with “minimal brain activity” following the wreck.

Investigators say Bollea was driving more than 60 mph in a 40-mph zone when he crashed the Supra. He was also cited for driving with illegal window tint and driving with a breath-alcohol level of .02 or higher. Let’s remember Bollea is underage and should not have been drinking at all.

The newest bit of information in this ongoing saga is that the driver with whom Bollea was racing, Daniel Jacobs, has been issued a summons to appear in court for a reckless driving charge. Jacobs is 22 and lives over on Pinehurst Road in Dunedin. What a proud day for Pinellas residents.

Hogan, a prominent public fixture here in town, collected Bollea from the jail after a brief news conference.