Blog on Fire Award!

Thanks to Kathy at Life As I Know It, who just gave me a Blog on Fire Award! She's an awesome blogger I recently discovered who eerily reminds me of myself: a gamer and Harry Potter fan who loves math, used to dance, and works at a zoo (well, I volunteered at an aquarium, but there's some similarity there).


For this award, I'm supposed to share seven things about myself. OK, let's see what random facts come to mind this morning...

1. I weighed 8 lbs, 8 oz when I was born--the chunkiest of my siblings.
2. For the rest of my childhood, though, I was extremely skinny.
3. I was baptized at age 14 with water brought in a bottle straight from the River Jordan. It was my confirmation class's Confirmation day, but since two of us had never been baptized in the first place, we got baptized that day. The parents of one of our classmates had just come back from a trip to Israel and had brought with them the symbolically significant water, which they kindly donated to our baptism.
4. I'm not really religious anymore, though I still treasure certain mementos from my time in Confirmation.
5. Perhaps my biggest claim to fame in college was as one of the Chapel Choir's kite flyers. During the big Opening Exercises and Baccalaureate ceremonies, three or four of us got to wave poles with large hand-painted silk kites on the end (wings and streamers--picture Japanese-style kites), leading processions, welcoming all the incoming students, or hailing the graduating seniors. No one was actually certain what the kites symbolized (we called them simply "spirit kites"), but most agreed they were beautiful and fun and added to the celebratory atmosphere.
6. I hate mayonnaise and mustard.
7. I don't drink alcohol. I'm like a little kid, still--I think it tastes yucky :-/

Hmm, those are some pretty random facts, though you can see certain trains of thought there.

Now I'm supposed to pass this blog award on to other deserving bloggers. To the recipients: Don't worry about accepting or not accepting the blog award, I have no expectations and don't care if you don't want to follow any or all of the supposed rules for the award.

Mariel of more than
Out of Sync of Reminiscing is a dangerous thing.
Angela of Lariats and Lavender
Ray J of Point Me to the Sky Above
Tabs A. Geek of Geeky Ambiguous Me
Kimolisa of Kimolisa Was Here
RachelLynn of stuff i think about

Stylish Blogger Award!

I recently received the Stylish Blogger Award from The Princess of Confessions of a Geek Princess. She's an awesome geek girl who posts deliciously geeky photos and videos, plus comments on all sorts of geeky subjects.


For this award, I'm supposed to share seven things about myself then award it to some other worthy bloggers. In honor of the "stylish" part of the award, and because I'm at a loss when things are too open ended, I'll list seven things about myself related to my style (I use the term loosely, you will see).

1. I love wearing long skirts. I have quite a good collection, so it's a shame that I don't get much opportunity to wear them, especially now that I'm in Hawaii and it's too hot for long skirts most of the time.

2. I know you're generally not supposed to mix silver and gold jewelry, but I always wear both, because of two pieces of jewelry that have great sentimental value to me: a gold necklace (small gold bead on a fine gold chain), and a silver ring with a moonstone.

3. I don't wear makeup or nail polish. I always wear chapstick, though.

4. In college, I worked at Ann Taylor. I actually didn't know what Ann Taylor was when my mom told me that they were hiring and I should apply, but thanks to the employee discount, I now own a lot of Ann Taylor clothes. I still buy them (on sale), now that I've gotten a taste for it.

5. I wish that full-length cloaks would come back in style. Not that I could wear them in Hawaii anyway, but still. They may not be practical, but they look so awesome billowing behind you.

6. I'm much lazier with my outfits now than I was in high school. Back then I used to wear cute socks (with things like sparkly fireflies, or pigs), quirky jewelry that always matched my outfit, assorted scarves, and I would style my hair in different ways. Now it's just pants, shirt, maybe a pair of earrings if I think of it, and hair loose. But I am always careful to match my flip-flops with my outfit.

7. I have on occasion worn the same pair of pants two days in a row. Like, uh, yesterday and today. I try not to wear them three days in a row. But I can't say it never happens. This may be more of a hygiene issue than a style issue... TMI Thursday!

And now to pass this award onto a few more stylish bloggers. Note to winners: Feel no pressure to follow the "rules" or do any follow up to your receipt of this award. I have no expectations :)

Tabs A. Geek of Geeky Ambiguous Me - Geeky girl who writes often touching posts about her personal life from her wonderfully geeky perspective.
Angela of Lariats and Lavender - Geeky gamer who writes about her life and interests and sometimes even her shares her style.
Kimolisa of Kimolisa Was Here - She posts insightful and/or amusing videos and pictures, fashion photos with commentary, and even some of her own designs.

P.S. I just noticed that my current blogger profile photo has me in a long Ann Taylor skirt. What did I say?

Versatile Blogger Award!

Yay, I just received the Versatile Blogger Award from Ambiguous Geek of Geeky ambiguous me. I never thought of myself as that versatile a blogger... I guess I talk about fantasy and sci-fi stuff while also posting photos (and some videos) of Hawaii. Anyway, I am truly honored. Thanks, Ambiguous Geek!

As usual, this award comes with some rules:
1. Thank the person who gave you the award
2. Share seven things about you
3. Nominate 15 newly discovered blogs
4. Let your nominees know about the award!

Any seven things about me? Whoa. Not sure where to start. Well, since this is the versatile blogger award, I'll try to think of some of my varied talents that don't often come up on this blog.

1. I played the flute from grade school all through high school, and I got quite good. Not that good--I wouldn't have made it into my university's prestigious orchestra--but good enough that people who don't know better are very impressed.
2. I sing pretty well, too. I was semi-professional in college (and by that I mean I was paid to sing but I didn't deserve it). I sing second soprano, and I once hit a high C (though I'll almost never attempt anything higher than an A).
3. I took dance classes from age four through high school, and I took one dance course in college. I did tap, jazz, ballet (including pointe), modern/contemporary, and a bit of hip hop (which I never really liked).
4. I can recite all of Shakespeare's Sonnet 129 in one breath at a volume loud enough to be heard by an audience.
5. I have been able to recite the last names of all the U.S. presidents in order of office since the age of seven.
6. Stupid human tricks: I can wiggle my ears, raise one eyebrow, curl my tongue both like a hot dog roll and like a little cloverleaf, plus twist it over both ways, and I can move my pinkie toe onto the toe next to it all by itself. And I can snap my ear, but I already mentioned that recently.
7. I'm quite good at foosball. I used to play doubles with my friends in college (we had a table in one of the common room areas), and I had some killer offense moves.

Now I'm supposed to nominate fifteen newly discovered blogs. First of all, fifteen? I couldn't even come up with twelve people to give one previous award, and that one didn't even stipulate they be newly discovered. And second, newly discovered by whom? Me? Like Columbus "discovering" the New World when there were plenty of people who'd known about it for thousands of years? OK, OK... Well, it's supposed to be the Versatile Blogger award, so how about I nominate some bloggers that I think are versatile in some way or another. Here goes.

Note to winners: Feel no pressure to follow the "rules" or do any follow up to your receipt of this award. I have no expectations :)

Sebastian - He's been posting a lot of TED talks recently, but he sometimes tackles really meaty subjects, talks about geeky things, and posts beautiful photos.
Hezabelle - She discusses her adventures and misadventures, posts photos from her travels, and sometimes teaches us about classics and Greek mythology.
Floreta, Solitary Panda - She talks about deep questions on her path to finding herself, plus she writes wonderful poetry.
Mei, of Diary of a Fair Weather Diver - She's funny and sweet as she talks about her life, and she has mad artistic skills.
Mary of Quarterlife Adventures - She's recently been detailing her adventures in Indonesia, but she also gives great restaurant reviews.

Hmm, total fail at coming up with fifteen. Anyone else reading this who wants the award, just say the word and it's yours!

Super comments award!

Yay, another blog award!

I recently was awarded the Super Comments Award from both Angel of Nerd Angel and (while in the midst of writing this post), RAY J from Point Me to the Sky Above. Thanks to both of you--you write super comments yourself!

The Rules:
1. Thank person who nominated you.
2. Copy the award. Paste it in your blog.
3. Link to the person who gave me this award.
4. Answer the 10 questions that come with the award.
5. Nominate of few of your favorite bloggers for the award. (Uh, just nominate? Who will then vote on the winners?!)

The Questions:

1. Why do you blog?
I started blogging because, while I've always had a strong inner monologue (or sometimes dialogue), I'd never regularly written down my thoughts in a coherent manner, and I figured it would be nice to air those thoughts in a blog. This is still a large part of why I blog, but now that I have actual readers and blogger friends, I write to share my thoughts, experiences, and life with these readers and friends. Also, I am very passionate about my geeky interests, so I blog to share the joys of geekery.

2. What are your 3 best memories?
It's hard to pick the three best, so I'll just choose three of my best memories, and I'll try to make them things I haven't talked about before on this blog.

Fall break junior year in college, I stayed at a beach house in Rhode Island with nine of my best friends. It was the perfect setting, with perfect weather, we had perfect little adventures, we played fun games, and I just loved all those people. I was completely and totally happy that week.

My high school graduation, I got to give one of the graduation speeches. The only person I'd actually told what I would be talking about was a slightly crazy freshman (don't ask why that came about), so I wasn't sure what people would think. But it was very well received (better received than the other two student speeches), and though I'd never been popular in school, I was proud and felt appreciated.

OK, for the third I'm going to go with the first time I went to the aquarium when they had sea otters (it was some time in middle school). Sea otters had been my favorite animal for years, but I'd never before seen one in person. I just sat there watching them for an hour. I was thrilled.

3. If you had to change your real name what would you change it to?
There are all sorts of cool names I could think of--like names in Elvish, or names of characters in fantasy books--but if we're talking about what I really would change my name to, I'd have to say Bryony. OK, so it's kind of a fantasy book name, too, since the first time I ever heard the name was in Outcast of Redwall. But it's a legitimate name, and I've loved it ever since I read that book.

4. What are five things you can’t live without?
Can't live without, or just would be miserable without. I'll go with the latter, since it's more interesting than the former's "food, water, shelter, love, etc."

Video games/TV shows/movies/books (some sort of diverting media)

The internet (not the same as the above)

Candy/cookies/something sweet to snack on

A nice cold glass of milk

Singing


5. What are the 4 best books you’ve ever read?
Best books? Or my favorites? The first is too complicated (I don't think I have enough of a critical eye to judge that), so I'll go with the second and list four of my favorites. No guarantees they're actually good books, though.

The Eye of the World, by Robert Jordan
Martin the Warrior, by Brian Jacques
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, by J.K. Rowling
The Elfstones of Shannara, by Terry Brooks

6. Tell me something unique and interesting about yourself.
I wrote a term paper for an engineering course at a prestigious university on the Lord of the Ring's Bridge of Khazad-dûm. Ack, I always bring that one up, and it's not even unique because I had a partner on the project (and who knows, there may be other people who've done it as well). I can also make a snapping sound with my earlobe that's as loud as a good finger snap. Maybe in combination those are unique.

7. What do you love best about yourself?
I am interested in the most interesting things! OK, obviously I'm not an objective judge in that matter, but I guess what I'm essentially saying is, I like that I'm a geek. I think I have good geeky taste. Again, I don't know if I can say this is what I love best, but it is one thing I like about myself.

8. What is the best movie ever made?
The Lord of the Rings trilogy. They filmed them at the same time, so it's basically one movie. I have to choose just one? Really? Oh dear. Two Towers? No, RotK? No, Fellowship? No--Aaaahhh! Shutting...down...

9. If you had a “freaky Friday” experience who would you trade places with and why?
I wouldn't want to trade places with someone in power, since I wouldn't have a clue what to do. I wouldn't want to trade places with a celebrity, because paparazzi might get in the way. Really, I think I would be embarrassed to intrude on anyone's life that I respect. I wouldn't mind trading places with Glenn Beck or Bill O'Reilly so that I could ruin them but that would be a total ripoff of Angel's... Hmm. Right now, I'd go with someone who gets to test the Kinect. Or The Old Republic. Or maybe someone who's at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park that just opened. That's all I got.

10. What’s the best part about being a woman?
Angel may have gotten it right when he said wearing pretty dresses, though I might change it to wearing long skirts (I looove wearing a long flowing skirt on a windy day). But to come up with something different... OK, so you're at a party/neighborhood barbecue/in-laws' house/social gathering of some sort. Someone forces you into a game of pool/ping-pong/tennis/basketball/whatever. You are absolutely terrible at said activity. If you're a man, it's embarrassing when you totally fumble, try after try. Other guys shake their heads, express their disappointment, and you scramble to make excuses. If you're a woman, you just laugh about it and people think you're cute and say you're good for just trying. This may not always be the case, and maybe it's just a symptom of low expectations for women or something, but I have found it convenient.


Whew, that was quite the questionnaire! OK, so the bloggers I now choose for this award (no pressure to follow the rules, I have no expectations :-) are Sparkling Blue who writes Tales of a Gemsinger, and Mary of Quarterlife Adventures. All of you wonderful commenters deserve this award, but several of you have already received the award, and others of you recently got an award from me. I don't want to be too easy ;)

Geek Girls Unite! blog award

I know I just posted about my first blog award, but I've actually just been given a second blog award. It's the Geek Girls Unite award from RAY J at Point Me to the Sky Above, an awesome geek girl who I only recently discovered as she was doing a giveaway on her blog to celebrate five years of World of Warcraft playing (a real veteran!). As a proud geek girl, I am very honored! The award was just created by Angela of High on Life, another geek girl I recently found--see, we geek girls are uniting!

And here are the rules:

List ten geeky facts about yourself and...

Pass this award onto your favorite female geeks!

Now my geeky facts. Some of these I've talked about on my blog before (one of my blog's themes is celebrating my geekiness, after all) but some are new little geeky gems!

1. I didn't start loving to read until I read Brian Jacques' Redwall series about woodland animals who (mostly) live in an abbey and take up swords and slings and bows and arrows when their peace is threatened by cruel invaders. It was my invaluable introduction to fantasy.
2. I've always enjoyed math and science. Now I'm working towards a PhD in physical oceanography (i.e., the physics of the ocean). Field work is all well and good, but what I really like is modeling--and I don't mean strutting down the runway. Computer programming is fun!
3. I can speak a little bit of Quenya (one of Tolkien's Elvish languages). Not much, but more than just direct quotes from Lord of the Rings; I know some grammar and a small vocabulary and can make my own sentences. What's more, I learned it for a self-tailored high school project which culminated in a presentation to my class. (All the gory details can be found here.) And I can write in the tengwar script.
4. Of course, my high school classmates already knew I was a geek. I was the president of my high school's Fantasy Reader's Guild. I even got our guild's picture in the local newspaper as we stood in line, in costume, waiting to see Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.
5. I love musicals and I love memorizing songs from musicals. I can sing from memory all or most of the songs from Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, Pocahontas, Mulan, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, Into the Woods, Wicked, Avenue Q, Guys and Dolls...
6. I'm a huge fan of Firefly, among many other sci-fi- and fantasy-related TV shows. In college, I got a bunch of friends hooked on Firefly, and when we watched the movie Serenity, I threw a theme party with Chinese food, ice-planets, and costumes. (I did a post on that one here.)
7. In my Ivy League civil engineering course called Mechanics of Solids, I did my term paper on The Bridge of Khazad-dûm: A structural analysis of a bridge of Dwarven engineering (that is, the bridge that Gandalf and the fiery Balrog fall off of in LotR). I got an A+. (Find the full story here.)
8. Up until I was 24 years old, the only boyfriends I'd ever had were non-player characters in my computer games: Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2, Knights of the Old Republic, and Mass Effect. (Get the juicy details here.)
9. Once I did get boyfriend, I proceeded to geekify him. So far we've covered Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, Dr. Horrible, Fringe, and The Guild, and our current projects are Big Bang Theory and Pushing Daisies.
10. Last but not least, what has been until now a closely guarded secret: When I was in 9th grade, I was in a youth bowling league. Not geeky enough? We named our team the Rolling Voltorbs. Yes, a voltorb is a Pokémon. Shaped like a ball. We were clever.


Now, I bestow this noble award upon these lovely geek girls:

Hezabelle - A Canadian studying towards a master's degree in the U.K. and enjoying her travels in Europe, she knows a lot about Greek history and mythology. She's also the only other girl I know who says she knows a tiny bit of Elvish.

Holly of Sorcery and Glue - Another girl who shares my love of BioWare games, she makes awesome costumes related to her favorite geeky things. Current projects: Mass Effect N7 armor and a Grunt costume with animatronic head!

Megan of Hollywood Jane - A fantasy and sci-fi fan and Joss Whedon lover trying to make it as a writer in L.A. She has a funny web series called "Quest for Comic-Con."

Geek Girl Diva - She keeps us geek girls updated on news to make us squee and geeky merchandise to make us drool.

My first blog award!

So it's taken me a while to post about it, but last month I got my first blog award, the Sunshine blog award from Kara at Crayons and Cylons! I only discovered her blog relatively recently, but it was clear from the start that we share a lot of similar geeky interests--Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, and the like.

As part of the award, I'm supposed to pass it on to twelve other bloggers--kind of chain letter-like. My attempt to come up with twelve bloggers to give it to has made it clear to me that I need to follow more blogs, because twelve is, well, most of my blogger friends. I have come to the conclusion that if I were to choose twelve winners, that would leave out just a few of my other lovely blogger buddies, which would be sad. So I'm cutting the number of awardees to six. It's my blog. I can do that. So here I am, passing the Sunshine Award on to some lovely bloggers who add sunshine to my day.

The Rules:

1. Put the logo on your blog within your post.

2. Pass the award on to twelve bloggers.
3. Link to the nominees within your post.
4. Let them know they received this award by commenting on their blog.
5. Share the love and the link to the person from whom you received this award.
***I will say, though, that my recipients should feel no obligation to pass this on to twelve--or any number--of other bloggers. I have no expectations :)

And the winners are:

Andhari of Insomniac Lolita - An Indonesian rapper and law student, she blogs about her exciting life and other fun things.

Floreta of Solitary Panda - A poet who on her road to find herself has recently been staying at a Buddhist monastery.

Pink Jellybaby - A beautiful Brit with a cat named Liz Lemon, she's a sweetie who sometimes gives us a little sauce on Fridays.

Sam of Things, Just Things - A cool, happy girl who recently went on a road trip to New Orleans.

Seb - A great geek who takes lovely pictures and writes thought-provoking pieces that I love to argue with, but only because I respect him.

Soft Nonsense - A funny, geeky guy who caught my eye by eating half of a pretzel so that the remainder looked like a bat'leth.


Thanks, Kara, for spreading a little sunshine. I should note that (Spoiler alert!) I have another round of winners for a second blog award coming up later today...