The media hype is beginning to swell again over H1N1 or the Swine Flu. Health officials are predicting a rough winter ahead and one way to combat that is by getting a flu shot. I get one every year and it’s not always expensive. To find out where the upcoming flu clinics will be in your area, you can use the American Lung Association’s online Flu Clinic Locator (www.flucliniclocator.org). Flu shots usually become available in late September. TIP: The best way to prevent getting sick is to wash your hands often, sneeze in your elbow and use antibacterial wipes to disinfect your airline seat, hotel room, rental car, etc.
Are you fascinated with pop culture and curious about where your favorite TV shows and movies were filmed? Growing up, two of my favorite shows were Happy Days and The Brady Bunch. I knew the Brady Bunch house was located in a suburb of Los Angeles but I had no idea the Happy Days house, which was supposed to be in Milwaukee, was located there too. The same goes for the home in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. That house was in Long Beach and WhereItsAt.com supplies the actual addresses of these pop culture houses and hundreds more. The good news is that not all shows or movies were filmed in L.A. In fact, many weren’t and I just looked up my hometown of Norwalk, CT and learned they used Lockwood-Mathews Mansion as the location of the men’s club in the 2004 film Stepford Wives with Nicole Kidman. In all, WhereItsAt.com has 286 spots and they can be sorted by city, region, movie, gangsters and ghouls, album covers, music mania and even the late John Hughes’ movie locations.
Here’s a perfect way to honor that unbelievable photo you took on your last vacation. Instead of keeping it hidden in a photo album or on an obscure page on your Facebook profile, you can now have it reprinted on canvas in all different styles so you can hang it proudly on the wall. The whole process is fascinating and it’s easy and affordable. Users upload (or you can email or send snail mail) their photo and the website’s professional artists will either paint it by hand in oils or a digital editor will manipulate it into one of several recognizable artistic styles from Pop Art, Lichtenstein, Che, Opie, Graphic or like Obama’s campaign poster. Sizes range from 12” x 16” to 40” x 60”. Prices start at just $55 and go up to $149. Customers pay only a 20% deposit and then pay in full after an online review process. The whole process takes a little over a week and the finished pieces are shipped flat or rolled anywhere in the world.
Okay, I thought I’d seen it all when it comes to adventure travel, from bungee jumping, and riverboarding to zorbing -- you name it. But after seeing this video, I realized that no sport I’ve ever seen comes anywhere close to these numb-nuts in wingsuits. After jumping off of thousand-foot-high cliffs, they soar through the air like Superman, wearing specially made suits that look like the body composition of a flying squirrel. One of the daredevils in this video flies so close to the mountain that he could reach out and touch it if his hand wouldn’t instantly snap off. This is one adventure activity I can safely say I will never participate in. Would you?
