Rumor has it that I’m inspiring.  At least that’s what Lindsey Parsons says, because she’s nominated me for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award.  Since I’ve received a few of these now over the last couple of months, I think you all know the drill, but in case you don’t:

Ze Rules

1. Thank the blogger who nominated you. (I’ve done this profusely, as I’ve done with every other award.)
2. Share seven things about yourself. (See below.)
3. Nominate other bloggers you think deserve the award, and post on their blog to let them know they’ve been nominated. (See below the below.)

My Seven Things

1. I adore Italian food.  Can’t get enough of it.  Lasagna, fettuccine, spaghetti, linguine, tortellini, I love it all.  Especially if it’s accompanied by something yummy for dessert.  Mmm, dessert… *drool*
2. I once tried my hand at writing music.  I dabbled with it a bit in high school during a music theory class I took my senior year, even daring to perform one of my pieces during the annual Jazz Show.  I once had a cell phone that came with this nifty little music composer thing, which allowed me to play around with composition with something akin to ease.  I’ve got a notebook full of staff paper with some random scribblings in it (I was trying to move into some more complex composition, but I’m sure I failed miserably at it) and maybe one day I’ll be brave enough to play them in front of people, or even in front of myself.  In the meantime, I suppose I’ll stick to tinkering about with words, but music is in my blood and I miss it.
3. I think I may be slowly developing a taste for coffee.  Mostly, I hate coffee.  Unless, of course, there’s so much cream and sugar (and chocolate, of course) in it that you can’t taste the coffee.  The scent is heavenly but the flavor?  Not so much.  However, since funds for my caffeinated beverage of choice seem to be running low of late and coffee at work is in plentiful supply, I’ve resorted to drinking the foul-tasting stuff by the pint.  We don’t have any creamer at work, but we do have sugar and with enough of it, the coffee is almost tolerable.  Maybe one day I’ll start liking the flavor as much as I love the aroma.  Either that, or I’ll wind up a diabetic.
4. 

   B’Elanna Torres (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

   As a teenager, I kept a notebook of names.  There were three sections in it, each of which spanned the alphabet.  One section was for male names, one was for female names, and one was for surnames.  I started it so that if I needed a character name for a story project, I could just open it up and pick one.  When I started having kids, I dug it back out and used it again.  It’s a good thing I never had kids when I was in high school or I would have stuck them with some unusual and/or unpronounceable name, like Quathyrin or Annedji or B’Elanna or Deianara.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the name B’Elanna (and I know one, too – my son’s cousin has that name) and I think it’s beautiful, but I’m glad I didn’t name my child after a Klingon – can you imagine the teasing?  There were some pretty off-the-wall boy names, too, but I can’t remember any of them off the top of my head because as a teenager, I was convinced I would have daughters.  Guess what, sixteen-year-old self?  You got boys.  You should have paid more attention to boy names.

5. I enjoy reading the dictionary.  I’m not kidding.  I’ve been known to sit down with it to look up a word and half an hour later, I’m still reading because the next word down caught my eye and so did the word after that and the word after that and…Well, you get the picture.  The same thing has happened with encyclopedias.  As a matter of fact, I spent the summer I was 13 studying Greek mythology via the World Book Encyclopedia set at my local library.  I miss World Book.
6. I nearly got distracted by Wikipedia just now when I made the mistake of clicking through to the link about B’Elanna Torres above.  I don’t know why I clicked through to it because I don’t know that it contains anything new (big Trekkie, in case you didn’t know, and Voyager is my favorite series), but I did and I nearly wasted a lot of time reading the entry.  I’ll probably go back and read it anyway once I’ve finished this post. 😀
7. I like to think that I was born a century too late, but the truth is that I was probably born at the right time, or maybe too early even because I’m horribly spoiled by modern conveniences like air conditioning and indoor plumbing.  While I yearn for a slower pace of life and the idealized version of the way things used to be, I wonder if I would really be happy in a different time, particularly if I wasn’t wealthy.  Something tells me that I wouldn’t be and with my luck, I’d be born dirt poor without even two pennies to rub together.

The Nominees

Hazel Butler is my nominee.  She blogs at Bipolar Vision about a variety of things, including issues related to mental health; runs Aädenian Ink, a newly-minted small publishing house; and is set to release her debut novel, Chasing Azrael, this fall.  An all-around great gal, Hazel definitely deserves the kudos.

And that’s all from me for now!  Time to get back to work.  But it’s my Friday, so I can at least be thankful for that.  Happy Friday (on a Thursday)!

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