Larry Hnetka Goes HMmmm

Photo Theme: Unique/Funny Signs

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In Tempe, Arizona, we stopped in to visit our friend Norma who winters there from the cold Saskatchewan winters. All the street signs in her retirement village are movie star names. This was my favourite.

Click on the photo for larger view
and to read the photo caption.

This week’s theme is Unique/Funny Signs. No need for explanation this week. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, don’t you know.

You know you want to! Finally you face can travel anywhere in Canada — on a letter or postcard that is.

Picture Postage™ allows you to customize your mail and create personalized stamps using your favourite photos.

Picture Postage™ stamps are valued at the current domestic rate. This means that one Picture Postage™ stamp gets any standard-size envelope (up to 30 grams) delivered anywhere in Canada.

I’ll make sure to make an extra sloppy slurp when affixing my stamp to my next letter to you.

Photo Theme: Thirteen

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My cousin Dinah and I are 13 years old. We're standing in my front yard in Regina, Saskatchewan. Both of us pimply bean poles. Yikes, childhood memories from the year MCMLXVI.

Click on the photo for a larger view
and to read the caption.

This week’s theme is Thirteen. My cousin Dinah and I are the same age: thirteen. This I know because the date is on the back of this photo.

These events all happened in the year I was thirteen:

• The Canada Pension Plan begins operation.
• The Munsinger Affair is the first Canadian sex scandal.
• Premier of Saskatchewan is W. Ross Thatcher.
• Bobby Hull sets the record for the most goals in the NHL.
• CBC is the first television station to broadcast in colour.
• The Centennial Flame is lit in Ottawa.
• A Man For All Seasons wins the Academy Award for best picture.
• Elizabeth Taylor wins the Oscar for Best Actress in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
• Frank Sinatra’s Strangers in the Night and Nancy Sinatra’s These Boots Are Made For Walking top the record charts.
• Cabaret is top box office musical on Broadway.
• Sophie Tucker dies; Janet Jackson is born.

Look at how skinny we both are. Puberty came later in those days I guess. Look at my white sneakers — I had to fight to get them rather than high top basketball sneakers. My glasses are better than I remember. I started wearing glasses at age 6 until about ten years ago when I finally had my eyes lasered (best thing I ever did). The weirdest thing is that I have a head of hair! Well, at 16 or 17, the head of hair started to go, one hair at a time (sigh).

These were more innocent and gentle times, I think. Sure, there was a lot going on outside of our little city of Regina, Saskatchewan but in our world, without all the media information, it was a kinder place in which to grow up.

[PS: the answer is in the photo caption.]

Thanks to Hootin’ Anni who kindly gave
this award to all PhotoHunters this week!

Ha, bet you didn’t know I was featured on the cover of TV Guide!

Well, I wasn’t. It’s one of those generator sites.

So if you want your own TV Guide cover, you can use this link to the TV Guide cover generator.

Tags: HMmmm

I always find some nugget of info when I visit The Presurfer.

My favourite of the 10 Coolest Hotel Suites in the World is this one.

It’s the Nautilus Suite at the exclusive Poseidon Undersea Resorts.

For a video tour, there’s a YouTube Video showing this amazing undersea resort scheduled for opening sometime in 2009.

This is just a bit of silliness diversion for those of you with a wiggling string fetish. Wiggle your string as long as you like.

Tags: HMmmm

Here’s a sample from Norman Roberts. His site is brief on words but the images certainly pack a punch.

Chinese Democracy Notebook.

What a View.

Swinging 80s!

PC Magazine published a list of 157 software tools.

Why is their list special? All of the software comes with:

Eric Griffith and PC Magazine Staff did the math: If you bought popular apps instead of trying their gratis counter-parts, at the manufacturers’ list prices you’d be out $5,183 and change!

Why spend money when you can get what you need for nothing? Sometimes, you do get what you don’t pay for.

Check out the list of 157 free software applications.

I’ve just spent the last two hours upgrading to Wordpress 2.5.

I’ve activated my plugins but am bumbling around the new format. If you find things are screwy, let me know and I’ll check it out as soon as I can.

Yikes, these upgrades give me headaches. I know in the long run it is a better blogging platform but I still hate the learning curve to get to know the upgraded features.

My friend always has a “theme” birthday party. This afternoon, I attended her “Mad Hatter’s Afternoon Tea Party.”

The invitation urged everyone to get into the spirit of the party. I immediately pooh-poohed the idea of just plopping any ready to wear hat on my head. No, I decided to make my own creation for this mad, afternoon soiree.

Now, I will confess, I can be a tad over-competitive but I think my feathered creation was the best of the hats at the party.

In researching the design for my hat, I came across the work of professional milliner, Jeanette Sendler.

Now let’s compare her work to mine in side by side shots of Ms. Sendler’s hat and my haute couture confection.

Click on the photos for larger views.

Seriously, is there any comparison?

I’ll even let you in on the secrets of how this creation came into being so you too can recreate this hat for yourself.

Follow these four easy steps and you’ll be wowing them on the street.

1. Go to a thrift store or scour your attic and find an appropriate lampshade.
2. Use a roll of duct tape on the inside to form a round cone so the hat sits on your head.
3. Go to your local Dollar Store and purchase feather boas.
4. Fire up your glue gun and paste these tickly feathers directly onto the lampshade.

Optional:

Ribbon: My sweating bald head against the duct tape lining caused the hat to slide off. Note the bit of ribbon attaching the hat. Brilliant solution, don’t you think?
Hat Pin: I went to my kitchen drawer and found a shish kabob skewer, rammed it through a foam chicken left over from Easter, and then added a few enhancements just to dress the hat pin up a tad.

Here’s a close up of the pin neatly cutting through the lamp shade and strategically placed towards the back of the hat.

Click on the photo for a startling close up view of the hat pin.

Of course the hat pin had no utilitarian purpose and was only decorative.

But it is touches like this that take haute couture to the next level. I’m mad, I know, but what fun I had.

Yes, I’ve gone there again! Here are some curious but HMmmm-able odds and ends from Everlasting Blort.

Curious? Just have to know?

Then click on the graphic to find out what’s going on!