BuzzSugar

Check Out My July Entertainment Calendar!

BuzzSugar — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:30:40 PDT

The weather is hot this month - but the entertainment is hotter. Need to know when Mamma Mia's opening, or the new X-Files movie? Check my handy-dandy, downloadable, printable July entertainment calendar! Surely you knew that The Dark Knight is opening July 18, but there's plenty of other great stuff going on this month, too. My calendar will help you keep things straight, and all the pretty colors look nice on a fridge or cube wall. Click here to get your copy, and enjoy!

How a Determined Desiree Davila Won a Spot on the US Olympic Marathon Team

espnW — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 04:25:02 PDT

We are pumped to share one of our fave stories from espnW here on FitSugar! This week's is an inspiring story about marathoner Desiree Davila, who will be representing the US in the Olympics for her first time. The following is an excerpt; read the entire story here.

By Bonnie D. Ford

At last January's Olympic trials in Houston, Texas, four top women had distanced themselves from the field: Desiree Davila, fellow favorites Shalane Flanagan and Kara Goucher, and Amy Hastings. Davila increased her tempo. Hastings dropped back. Davila forged on with Flanagan and Goucher, her five-foot-two, 98-pound frame dwarfed by her taller rivals. Then, with two miles to go, Flanagan kicked into a higher gear, and Davila was faced with another decision: should she try to match the surge and bid for the win, taking the chance that her cramping calves would betray her, or maintain her pace and protect her spot on the team?

Davila weighed the situation and decided not to risk it. Flanagan soloed to the line, and Davila secured her Olympic spot by finishing second, 17 seconds back, in 2:25:55. It was a tough, savvy race, and the latest evidence that Davila's gradual climb to the top is peaking at an ideal juncture.

After a largely anonymous high school and college career in the arid heat of Southern California and Arizona, she migrated to Michigan to join the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project in 2005. The elite training environment in a harsher climate helped her transform herself into "a contender, not just someone who's on the line and might have a good day," as she put it.

The Lesson Learned From Second Place

Davila debuted at the marathon distance in Boston in 2007 and ran 2:44.56 in a raging northeaster. A year later on the same course, Davila thought she had progressed enough to make the Olympic team. At mile 21, running fourth, it looked as if she'd been right. But Davila, who hadn't hydrated and eaten enough before the race, ran out of gas and faded to 13th.

She was devastated. Fellow marathoner and friend Amy Hastings was there to comfort her, and so was sister Natalie Davila. "If I'm investing my money in someone right now, it's you," the older sister said. "You're going in the right direction - you're going up."

Read on for more of Desiree Davila's road to the Olympics after the break.

Gymnast Shawn Johnson Dreams of Making the Team

Susi May — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:35:22 PST

Shawn Johnson never officially retired from gymnastics. Although she toyed with the idea after the 2008 games, she's once again set her sights on the Olympics. But the decision to step back into competition wasn't simple. It took a a self-described "garage sale" wipeout on the ski slopes to end her indecision. Ironically, skiing, the only activity Shawn's long-time coach Liang Chow (they've worked together since she was 6) considered completely off-limits, brought her back into the game.

At a recent event at Nike headquarters, in Beaverton, OR, Shawn told me that after learning the results of her postaccident MRI, she drove straight to the gym and told Chow she wanted to come back even though she had torn two ligaments in her knee, torn her meniscus (the cushion of cartilage that sits between the thigh and the tibia, or shin bone), and ripped her hamstrings. "Instead of thinking, 'I'll never be able to come back now,' the first thing that came to me was, 'I have to go back.' It was kind of a motivation to me to get healthy again and to rehab myself . . . I really like to make things hard, and I don't like things that are easy."

Keep reading to learn more about Shawn's comeback.

Kate Moss and Jamie Hince Gear Up For Their First Married Holiday

Allie Merriam — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 10:26:47 PST

Kate Moss and her husband Jamie Hince went out to dinner at London's Wolseley on Saturday night. Joining the couple for the meal was Jamie's bandmate from The Kills, Alison Mosshart. Kate, Jamie, and a pink-haired Alison waited outside afterward then hopped into a taxi together.

Jamie and Kate are heading into their first holiday season as a married couple, though it's their fourth since getting together back in the Fall of 2008. Their July nuptials were among our favorite celebrity weddings of 2011, and there will be more excitement for Kate and Jamie in the coming months. Construction is reportedly almost done on their new North London home, and Kate even has a special calendar all ready to hang up inside. Kate Moss got a signed 2012 calendar from Mark Wright, a British reality star she's obsessed with from the show The Only Way Is Essex.

The US Credit Rating Downgrade: What It Means For You

LearnVest — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 00:15:35 PDT

We're thrilled to present this smart LearnVest story here on Savvy!

You’ve probably heard the news already-our country’s credit rating just took a dive.

On Friday evening, Standard & Poor’s, one of the world’s three major credit rating agencies, dealt a major blow to the United States’ financial psyche by announcing that it has downgraded the country’s credit rating from AAA to AA+. This marks the first time in history that the U.S. has lost its top-ranked credit rating from one of the major agencies.

The U.S. moves from the company of other AAA countries like Australia, Canada, France, Singapore and Germany to the company of the two AA+ countries, Belgium and New Zealand. The world is reeling with varied reactions to this news, as analysts try to predict what this will mean for the domestic and global economies. Is this media hype or true disaster? Can we fix the situation and earn our AAA score back? And what does this mean for the average American?

We cut through the noise to bring you the cheat sheet on the credit rating downgrade, the various viewpoints on the downgrade itself, its potential effects-and what it means for you.

What Happened-In a Snapshot

As we reported in our story last week summarizing the debt ceiling deal, governments receive credit rating scores that investors use to analyze credit-worthiness. These credit scores are determined by three major international credit reporting agencies: Moody’s, Fitch and Standard & Poor’s.

After the debt ceiling deal was struck, Moody’s and Fitch maintained their AAA scores for the U.S. (although Moody’s downgraded the U.S. credit outlook to “negative”). S&P, on the other hand, decided on Friday to downgrade the U.S.’s credit rating to AA+. For the first time in history, America lost its unanimous AAA rating across all three agencies. On a side note, however, China’s leading credit agency Dagong Global Credit Rating Co. stripped America, Britain, Germany and France of their AAA ratings last July, accusing the top three agencies of Western bias, and giving greater weight to “wealth creating capacity.”

Read on to find out what it means for you.

Meet Charlene Wittstock, the Future Princess of Monaco

Annie Scudder — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 14:49:54 PDT

If there's one thing the Monaco royal family wants you to know about Prince Albert's fiancée Charlene Wittstock, it's that she does not have cold feet. The 33-year-old South African beauty is set to marry the tiny country's reigning Prince Albert, 53, this weekend, amidst rumors that she might become a runaway bride before that can happen. But the palace has flatly denied the story appearing in the French press that Charlene tried to go back to Africa after learning "Albert had not been leading the exemplary life she thought."

Once she becomes the princess of Monaco and fills the role that Albert's mother, Grace Kelly, once held, the people of Monaco will not-so-patiently wait for Charlene to have a child. Prince Albert has sired two children out of wedlock, and his lack of a legitimate heir has caused concerns about the future of the monarchy and Monaco's independence from France.

Before she entered into Riviera royalty, Charlene was part of sports royalty as a member of South Africa's Olympic swim team in 2000 and 2008. It was swimming that brought her to the prince in 2000, when she traveled to Monaco for a competition, but they did not become a public couple until stepping out together at the 2006 Winter Olympics. After their engagement on June 23 of last year, Charlene, a former Protestant, converted to Catholicism - she also learned French and the Monégasque dialect as part of her princess training.

Following the civil marriage service on July 1 and a religious ceremony on July 2, Charlene will take the elegant title of Her Serene Highness The Princess of Monaco. Before she walks down the royal aisle, take a look at her past glamorous, and sporty, moments now.

Beauty Byte: Jessica Simpson to Launch Fragrance

BellaSugar — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 10:44:31 PDT

What do Mariah Carey, Gwen Stefani and Jessica Simpson have in common-aside from their platinum albums? They're all entering the celebrity-fragrance business. Here's the scoop from Parlux, the beauty company she's working with:

The fragrance line will debut in July 2008, in the U.S., with an international roll-out shortly thereafter. The fragrance will reflect Ms. Simpson’s style, personality and confidence.

According to Ms. Simpson, “I wanted to partner with a company that would be able to express my personality through a fragrance. After meeting with Parlux, I’m extremely excited to start the development process with them.”

I'm curious to find out what Jessica comes up with. I bet it'll be very feminine, fruity and soft (and that somewhere, Ashlee Simpson is mulling her own fragrance, too). What do you think?
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