herbiehancock

My friend, Becky, who writes the blog, *Becky Povich: Writer - Journalist - Humorist* , passed on to me the Creative Writer Blogger Award.  Thank you, Becky!  This award encourages writers to use their "creative license," if you will.   Becky is also having a giveaway contest on her blog right now if you'd like to enter.  Please visit this post to find out more about it, but hurry because she will be choosing the winner after midnight on March 31st. Anyway for this meme, according to the rules, I am to list seven wild or wacky tidbits about myself, at least one of which is true.   So this is my list.  It is up to you to decide which ones are true and which ones are outright lies and products of my creative license. 1.  I once crashed a moped I was riding full speed into a lilac bush. 2.  I can speak four languages fluently. 3.  I have ridden in the rumble seat of an antique car on numerous occasions. 4.  I was once kissed by Harry Chapi...

 Happiness Early morning quiet, a lemony-tangerine  sunrise surprise, orange pekoe  steeping in a cup, you watching me,  with soft brown eyes. You nuzzling my neck. (if only in my mind) Your words that make me laugh, your words that are kind  lift me up like a curtain   in a warm spring breeze. I know that you care. Your presence is there. Feelings I have for you  make me weak   in the knees.    *   *   *   *   * The poem above is my response to a tag from my good friend, Michelle, who writes the blog, Crow's Feet . She tagged me with the Happy 101 meme.  For this meme, I was supposed to list ten things that make me happy.  Instead of a list, I decided to put my thoughts into a poem. If you'd like to write about the things that make you happy and continue this meme, please consider yourself tagged by me and take the logo above back with you to post on your blog.

My dear friend, Graciel, who writes the blog, Evenstar Art , has tagged me for a photo meme, and I have taken up her challenge.  These are the rules of the meme: 1. Open your first photo folder. 2. Scroll down to your 10th photo. 3. Post the photo and the story behind it. 4. Tag 5 people to play along.   My tenth photo happened to be a picture I took in my front yard of a dragonfly sitting on a green maple tree leaf.  Obviously, this photo was taken during the summer.     You won't see ANY leaves outside in my yard right now--especially not green ones hanging on a tree.  You might find an old, dried, shriveled-up, brown one, but you'd have to dig for it.  We woke up this morning to two more inches of new snow   from over night last night.  It is definitely not summer out there, but anyway, back to the dragonfly picture. I have no real story to tell about the picture, so I wrote a poem to go along with it. I hope you enjoy it....

This giant yellow smiley face is actually a telephone. I saw it at an antiques marketplace today and thought it would be a good choice for this week's Mellow Yellow Monday. Happy Monday to you all! To visit others who are having a Mellow Yellow Monday, click on the butterfly badge below.

My dog Max made me smile today. Under this desk is the vent from our heating system where warm air blows out into the room. When it is cold outside, he likes to lie under here to keep himself warm. I had temporarily draped my coat over the back of the chair in front of the desk which made it extra toasty under there today, I would imagine. I had to smile when I found him here. I was reminded of the old saying, "Cold hands, warm heart." I decided that Max's version of the saying would be, "Cold nose, warm heart." To view others who found something to smile about on Sunday, click the badge below.

Michelle from the blog, Crow's Feet , has tagged me with an interesting new meme that she created. She pointed me in the direction of a website called Save the Words . Every year hundreds of words are dropped from the dictionary, to make room for newer words. Save The Words is a website campaigning to save obscure or old words before they vanish from the English language forever. Once you join, you can adopt any of the words at their site. By adopting a word, you also promise to use it. Michelle challenged me to go to Save the Words and adopt a word, then, to find a way to use it in a sentence or as a theme for a blog post or photograph. I accepted her challenge and clicked over to the Save the Words site to see what I would find. There were lots of fun and interesting words there, all literally calling out to me saying "Pick me! Pick me!" (Go visit the site, you'll see what fun it is. I heard voices and you will too!) I decided to choose a word randomly the way th...

This list of "Have You Ever?" questions is a meme that I saw on blogs by both Michelle and Speedy . It looked like fun, so I'm giving it a try. Copy the questions and supply your own answers on your blog if you want to play along. 1. Have you ever been on TV? Yes, I have. Well, sort of. I wasn't on there intentionally, and it was for just a few seconds, so I'm not even sure if I should count it. I was attending an ice hockey game at Bowling Green State University. After the game, the local TV news crew was there doing a feature piece about the team mascot, Freida Falcon. I happened to be standing behind the mascot in the crowd there when the cameras were on. Short-lived fame--ha ha! No, that's not me in the photo below--that's Freida! 2. Have you ever sung in public? Yes, I have, but not solo. I sang with an all-girl ensemble group of eight teens when I was in high school. I remember we sang the song, "You'll Never Walk Alone" for some...

Dorothy at Counting My Blessings blog has tagged me for a #5 photo meme. Here are the rules: open a document or file folder, click on the fifth folder and then the fifth photo. Post the photo and describe it. Then tag 5 other bloggers. I'm going to break the rules a bit by not tagging anyone specifically. However, if you are reading this and would like to take on this meme for your blog, by all means, help yourself. Let me know if you do, and I will come see what photo ends up being your post. The photo above was the #5 for me. It was taken in the fall of 2007 of a tree in my neighborhood. The leaves were changing colors, and I was out for a walk with my camera in hand. I saw this tree and just thought it was amazingly beautiful. It looked like it was almost literally "on fire" with all the reds, oranges, and yellows that were blazing in it. I'm glad that this happened to be the #5 in the folder for me. I could use a little warmth from the "fire" in...

Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate? Hot chocolate!! with a marshmallow in it, of course! Does Santa wrap presents or set them under the tree? He wraps them AND sets them under the tree. (What a silly question! What else would he do with the presents besides set them under the tree? Shoot them out of a cannon? Bury them in the snow? The only exception is that he sometimes will put a small one or two in the stockings that we hang.) Colored or white lights on the tree? Actually we have one of those fiber optic trees with rotating color filters that lights itself up, so we don't even string lights on the tree . When do you put your decorations up? Sometime in December. Some years it has been very early in the month and some years it has been very late. Most years we manage to get the decorating done around the 14th or 15th of the month. We got it done this year on the 14th. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)? Homemade rolls hot from the oven with butter and...

Eric from the Speedcat Hollydale Page has threatened to toss me into a dungeon without a key if I don't pick up this countdown meme from him that he has tagged me with. Well, I REALLY don't want to spend Christmas in a dungeon, so I thought I better get this done. Here's the countdown. 10 Things I Wish I Could Say To 10 Different People Right Now (I'm not telling you who the people are that I want to say these things to, so don't ask!) 1. Stop coming to my door and asking me to buy new windows and siding from you!! (while shaking my fist in the air) 2. I wish you weren't so far away. 3. Oh come on, play the drums for me. Please? 4. No. I don't want to bake cookies for the bake sale. 5. You know, you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar. (Although, I've never figured out why anyone would want to catch ONE fly, let alone MORE of them!) 6. Don't be in such a rush. You have plenty of time ahead of you. 7. Yes. Oh yes! 8. ...

I was tagged by Tink at Memories and Random Thoughts for the following list of 44 questions. If you have time, stop by Tink's blog to say hello to her and see her answers to these questions. Learn 44 things about your friends, and let them learn 44 things about you! If you would like to pick up this tag and post it on your blog, be my guest! 1. Do you like bleu cheese? Not too much. However, I might like BLUE cheese if it were really cream cheese that has been made into cream cheese frosting with blue food coloring in it and used to frost a CAKE! You all already know that I like cake . 2. Have you ever smoked? No, I haven't. 3. Do you own a gun? Yes, I have a cookie shooter/cake icing gun. You know the ones with a tube you fill up with cookie dough or cake icing and then turn the handle and it squirts out little star or flower shaped cookies or a fancy squiggle design of icing to frost a cake with. What? Why are you looking at me like that? Oh. You mean a gun li...