If you're looking for the biggest, best Fourth of July fireworks, I found a really wild website. It's called the Fireworks Display and Shows Worldwide Guide, and once you get over the garish colors, layout and goofy graphics, it's got a ton of information. I went straight to the 10 Largest, Biggest, [...]

I'd never heard of National Tartan Day until this year. It's celebrated on April 6 in the US and Canada and has been an official event since 2005 in the US. But Tartan Day is also celebrated elsewhere in the world (in some places on July 1). Here are some [...]

I've always been intrigued by two islands named after holidays: Christmas Island and Easter Island. Christmas Island was discovered by Captain William Mynors while sailing aboard the Royal Mary, a British East India Company vessel. Mynors sailed past it on Christmas Day in 1643, hence the name. The other holiday island is [...]

Easter egg hunts for adults? The last egg kids' hunt I went on I was to take photographs for our local newspaper ... it was one of those pre-digital oops! times when I realized after the event I had no film in the camera. Prior to that, we'd done egg [...]

If you love a parade, and all things Irish, the celebrations begin across the United States this weekend. Saint Patrick's Day parades are so popular that there's a website dedicated to them. And no surprise that Ireland's #1 tourist attraction, Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, is throwing a huge party, too. [...]

Our choice for a New Year's Day movie was narrowed down to two: Sherlock Holmes and It's Complicated. We ended up going with the latter, which was a real hoot. Filmed mostly in Santa Barbara, California it's an all-American film, written and directed by Nancy Meyers. The one that got away, Sherlock [...]

...unless you happen to live in Central Coast California, that is. This came in from my local paper of record today:

For the fifth year, downtown Santa Cruz will be designated a "safety enhancement zone" starting at 8 p.m. tonight and ending at 3 a.m. Jan. 1. The effort [...]

I hate to be a curmudgeon but—no, wait, I actually love to be a curmudgeon. And in the interest of as much curmudgeonly, Andy-Rooney-esque behavior as possible for the remaining hours of 2009, I would like to go on the record as saying I dislike New Year's Eve. I was going [...]

Each year Waterford Crystal designs a new pattern for the Times Square Ball that drops on New Year's Eve. The new crystals, triangular in shape, number in the hundreds and are installed alongside the permanent Waterford crystals that remain in the ball year after year. This year, the company made [...]

I hope your 2010, and the decade to come, is filled with good things. Here are a few of the life lessons that hit me upside the head these past few years, some more gently than others: 1) Young 'uns rule. If you're older than 35, 45, let alone 50, it's a [...]