7X7 Link Award

Wheee! Pass it on!

Today’s post is going to tackle some topics that aren’t usually on this blog. Mostly because I’ve been nominated for a blogging award by the ever wonderful Transman.  His blog is interesting, educational, and (best of all for me) funny!

You see, it appears that the 7X7 Link Award is a double edge sword–in the end, your blog ends up resembling one of those old-fashioned chain letters, or maybe like one of those little “pass-it-on” secrets we kids would whisper into each others’ ears: “Mr. Adams is a big, fat hairy ape.  Pass it on!” until the original message was garbled so much that the last kid to hear would pass on something completely different to the first kid who started the whole sordid affair; “Holly isn’t wearing underwear.  Pass it on!”

The Chain Letter Award 7X7 Link Award requires me to fulfill some steps once I’ve been nominated for it.  So that’s what today’s post is going to be about.  Tomorrow, I promise to write a “normal” post that catches you up on what I’ve been doing the last week.

Anyhow, in a nutshell, the steps I have to take after I get this award are to:

1) Reveal seven things about myself that you don’t already know.  (I wonder how much detail this means?  Like stuff about my childhood?  What I like on my burger? What? After checking a bunch of other bloggers’ posts who have won this award, it looks like anything goes.  Wow.) 

2) Link seven of my posts to the following categories: Most Surprisingly Successful, Most Underrated, Most Popular, Most Beautiful, Most Helpful, Most Controversial and Most Pride-Worthy.  (Ummmm.  Okaaayyy.)

3) Bestow this tremendous award – and responsibility – upon seven other bloggers and share with you why I believe they are so deserving.  (This is where the chain letter/”pass-it-on” phenomenon comes in.  Sorry in advance to my nominees!)

So without further ado, I will tackle the first part of my three part objective.

SEVEN THINGS YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT ME, BUT AREN’T AFRAID TO ASK: (in no particular order)

My dad's nose. My nose is genetically destined to look like that, complete with whiskers, in the next 10 years.

1)  SUPER OLFACTORY POWER, ACTIVATE!  I’m like Wolverine from X-men when it comes to odors.  (Yeah, I know I just mixed super hero cartoon references, but I don’t give a rat’s patootie.) Okay, maybe not that good, but pretty good.  I’m usually the first to smell something burning, first to tell if somebody in the room has been smoking pot or cigarettes, first to detect somebody’s fart (including my own, so I glide like a ninja to another location and let somebody else take the rap).  This is  handy skill.

However, it isn’t so great when I am in the company of people who like to bathe in cologne/perfume or cigarette smoke.  Then it is sheer torture.  I had to quit my job at May Company when I was working as a seasonal “Sales Associate” several years ago because no matter where they moved me in the store, the odors from the stupid perfume counter and the people who got spritzed, not to mention my co-workers who liberally doused themselves, were just too much for me to handle.  And don’t get me started on cigarettes.  In addition to the smell really bothering me, I think I’m mildly allergic, so my throat gets all scratchy and I feel miserable.

Ugh. Please direct me to the nearest porcelain throne. (Image from http://www.company.noridirect.com/)

2)  NORI IS DISGUSTING!  Sushi and I don’t get along because of it.  I don’t like the seaweed wrapping, cucumbers, avocados (though, strangely, I love guacamole), or fish roe.  However, raw fish doesn’t bother me, though I’m not wild about it.  So the sushi that’s just the rice balls with dabs of fish or shrimp are okay.

Overall, though, I try not to go to sushi places.  The pesky odor thing.  The smell of the seaweed makes me gag, if I get too close to it.  My husband had some spam musubi (which, in my mind, is related to sushi because it has that odious nori wrap) in the car once and the smell of the processed pink slime combined with the seaweed was horrible!  I had to roll down all the windows and gasp the pure car-exhaust polluted air.  Not much better, but better than nori.

It's cow poop! I know, let's roll in it! So sayeth the dog. (image from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CowPie-JeffVanuga.JPG)

3)  COW MANURE IS FUN (NOT)!  I still owe my sister a huge debt of gratitude for washing cow crap off my dog ten years ago.  We were at a truck stop, and he managed to find the one cow pie that was left behind after a cattle hauler had skedaddled.  I was pregnant and my Wolverine scenting senses (ha! alliteration) were in overdrive.  I couldn’t go near the dog without wanting to puke.  There are times when the super nose excuse certainly comes in handy!  This was definitely one of them.  And, being a hormonal pregnant woman threatening to rip someone’s head off if something isn’t done and done quick doesn’t hurt.  Not that I did that.  I would never do that.  I’m nice.

I see a dollar sign! (I wish!)

4)  I’M POOR, SO I’M NOT THRIFTY!   I won second place in an essay writing contest put on by a bank when I was a kid.  I won $10 for my essay on what it means to be thrifty!  This was a slam dunk, as far as I was concerned, because I grew up poor (and the federal poverty level would probably still define me as such) and thrifty was a necessity.  Or rather, there is no such thing as thrifty when you have very little or no money.  “Thrifty” is a way of life when you’re poor.  You pinch pennies where ever you can just to survive.  The middle class folks get to be “thrifty.”  Do the rich even worry about being thrifty?  Somehow, I doubt it.  Of course, none of these class arguments were in my essay.  To be honest, I don’t remember what I even said.

Do you remember how to do this stuff? (Image courtesy of http://learningteaching.co.uk/resources/solving-linear-equations)

5)  MATH IS MY FRIEND. MOSTLY.  As in, yes, math DOES apply to people’s lives.  When I was a kid, I don’t know how many times I heard other kids whine, “I don’t know why we’re learning this; we’re never going to use it!”  But I find all sorts of situations where math comes in handy.  Just the other day I was using algebra (pre-algebra?) to discover how many protein grams I needed to ingest to get the appropriate ratio of carbs to fats to proteins in my diet.  Handy things, those ratios.

As I get older, though, I find I’m forgetting more of the formulas.  I’ve forgotten much of my geometry and trig, which bothers me, because I come across many a situation where I wish I could remember my sines and co-sines.  Or when I wonder how to figure out the area of an irregular shape.

However, I was never good at calculus.  Imaginary numbers are Satan’s playthings.

I own a Rosie the Riveter action figure. She rocks!

6)  MY HUSBAND CALLS ME AN ANTI-FEMINIST.  I’m actually an ardent feminist, if you couldn’t tell from reading my blog up to this point.  I’m very independent and opinionated.  But, there are some things that I admit women are not as good as men at.  That’s why he calls me the anti-feminist.

Mostly, it has to do with physically demanding tasks.  I think women should be given the opportunity to do them and get paid the same, yes, but if they cannot keep up with the men, they shouldn’t be doing them.

This is especially true in the military.  I believe women should be willing and ready to go into combat.  However, female physical specifications are different then males when it comes to physical fitness tests.  That would need to change for women going into combat.  I think that if women want to be included in combat readiness, they need to be able to do what the men do.  If they can meet the physical criteria, then have at it.  If they can’t, sorry, they are only going to slow the men down and that can cost lives.

An accurate representation of my family with my cookies. (Image from http://www.doobybrain.com/2009/02/01/cookie-eating-cookie-monster-cupcake/)

7)  A COOKIE BAKING GODDESS, THAT’S ME!  I am an awesome baker.  My cookies are legendary/world famous amongst my family and friends.  When I was 12 or 13 I won first prize at the Josephine County Fair in the oatmeal cookie category for my Oatmeal Coconut Crispies.  I haven’t competed since.  Gotta give the other bakers a chance, you know.  Mostly people ask for my “everything-but-the-kitchen-sink” chocolate chip cookies.  For some reason, people really like those!

You know, I was looking on Etsy (or was it Cafe Press?), and they sell cookies on there $25 for a dozen, not counting shipping!  And that’s not just one person charging exorbitant amounts for cookies.  There were a bunch of psychos cookie entrepeneurs charging that much!

Hm.  Maybe I should sell some cookies to fund my trip…  Any buyers?

Okay, so that’s my seven things you didn’t know about me and weren’t afraid to ask.  But now you might wish you hadn’t.  🙂

On to part two of my task.

SEVEN POSTS THAT FIT WEIRD CATEGORIES

1)  MOST SURPRISINGLY SUCCESSFUL-Well, that is my home page. Which changes every time a new post goes up.  My pages all have goodly amounts of clicks on them.  However, if I actually look at the individual posts, the one about my birthday has the most views.  So I guess it wins.  Not sure why that would interest so many people–maybe it’s because of the pretty “happy birthday” graphic on it.  Actually, now that I think of it, that is probably it.  The search engines drive a lot of people to my site from people looking for clip art.

2)  MOST UNDER RATED–It’s Just a Little Christmas Debauchery.  With a catchy title like that, I thought I’d get tons of clicks on that one.  Nope.  Only one!   And there was even a fun little comic toward the bottom.  Sigh.  Go figure.

3)  MOST POPULAR-Well, I would say that’s the birthday one, because of all the clicks.  However, I think the one that I’ve gotten the most comments on might be a better choice.  I got a whopping 12 comments (yeah, I know, some of those are mine…shh!) on Adventures With Shoes…In the Rain.

4)  MOST BEAUTIFUL-wha?  I don’t have any beautiful posts. I do, however, have a page that has a pretty nice photo gallery that folks can check out at My 2009 Walk.

5)  MOST HELPFUL-hm.  Well, I suppose that I was actively trying to help Gary Mitchell when I posted about his walk for cancer research coming up.  I think that counts?

6)  MOST-CONTROVERSIAL-Oh, this post probably will count toward that one with my remarks about being an “anti-feminist” and saying the rich can’t be thrifty.  Other than that, I haven’t really written anything controversial on this blog.  Unless you consider writing about walking across America by one’s lonesome, controversial.

7)  MOST PRIDE-WORTHY-Whoo boy.  I have no idea.  I’m kinda having fun with this post, since it is out of the ordinary for me, so I guess that would be this one, as well.  I mean, I brag and toot my own horn several times. That’s awful pride-worthy, isn’t it?  Or is that pride-ful?  Eh, whatever.

There is the one where I announced that I was losing lots of weight and getting more fit.  And also maybe the one where I wrote the essay about walking home being faster than walking somewhere else.  I like how that essay turned out.  So I suppose those two are pride-worthy for different reasons.

You know, I’m still pretty new with this blog, just barely having only 28 posts, counting this one.  I’m sure as I stick with it, my selections will change, since I will have a lot more to choose from, and I’ll have some really kick-ass adventures to write about.

So now I come down to spreading the pain, er, I mean love of this chain-letter-pass-it-on 7X7 Link Award.  I don’t think I’m allowed to choose the person who picked me, because he just finished a 7X7 Link Award whereby he chose me among his seven bloggers, so that would be kind of silly.  (But just so you know, Transman’s blog is pretty awesome.)  So, I think in the spirit of promoting my fellow walkers/runners/and hikers, I’m going to share this fabulous award with them.

Which seven totally hip cats deserve this award?  There are so many cool blogs to choose from!  But I’ve managed to narrow it down to the seven this award calls for.  You nominees, I’ll be sending you an email or commenting on your blogs about it soon, so you can join in on all this work this wonderful award.

SEVEN TOTALLY FANTASTIC BLOGS YOU SHOULD ABSOLUTELY START READING RIGHT AWAY: (again, in no particular order)

1) nate walks america and his other site here.  (No, I didn’t forget the caps on the title.  That’s how he has it, so that’s how I typed it.)  Nate Damm is the man who inspired me to get back to my dream of walking across America.  I happen to read about his walk across America last year on Chris Guillebeau’s blog, and so I clicked on his link and was hooked.  It got my imagination going.  By the time I had read through several posts, I was hooked, subscribed, and decided that I would walk again!  Nate is a wonderful, helpful, thoughtful, philosophical, encouraging person, who even went so far as to post a video plea to encourage people to fund my kickstarter campaign.  Nate is, in a word, awesome.

2) Adventure Awaits.   Kelly, aka Ameranth, is one of the few female solo walkers I’ve found out there.  She and her dog, Anna, walked across America last year.  Kelly is another cheerleader of mine, twittering and re-tweeting about what I’ve been up to and she even sent me a bear vault and some goodies to help with the trip!  How cool is that?  Not to mention, her blog is a fun read.   My inner gamer geek loves that she’s a gamer geek, too.

3)  Walk2Connect and KivaWalk.  Both of these are written by Jonathon Stalls.  KivaWalk is the blog about the trip he took walking across America with his dog, Kanoa.  The other blog is more about what he’s working on right now.  Watching the videos he’s got is very interesting.  It is obvious that walking across America has affected him in very profound ways.  Like Kelly and Nate, Jonathon has been a wonderful supporter of mine, encouraging others to donate to my campaign.

4) Tyler Coulson.  He walked across America with his dog, Mabel.  His posts tend to be funny and can be very introspective.  I think walking across America does that to you.  It gives you plenty of time to think.  One of my favorites that he wrote that shows this introspective side can be found here.

5a) Walk America.  Nick and Lucy are a couple of British citizens tromping across America for fun and adventure.  And they want to raise money for the Pamir Trust.  I love reading this blog, because Nick and Lucy both have the most wonderful, wry sense of humor.  And it is fun to see the English spellings of words we Americans spell differently (yeah, I’m a word nerd).  It’s probably not fair choosing them, since they are still mid-walk and likely don’t do a lot of reading of other people’s blogs.  They are too busy getting blisters and meeting weird strangers.  They are currently somewhere in Texas.  Which is why I have a 5a and a 5b choice, in case they can’t accept this most gracious award.

5b) Dog Walk Across America.  Now, the reason I’m choosing Kait Seyal and John Seyal and their sweet puppies as 5b is because they haven’t started their walk yet.  But their blog is funny, informative, chock full of sweet pictures of their doggies and even some groovy artwork.  I am super impressed by how organized they are and how they seem to have thought of everything logistics-wise!  You want to learn how to plan it right, go to this blog.  Seriously.  I have no doubt they will accomplish their objective.

6)  I’m Just Walkin’.  Matt Green walked across America and now he has given himself a new objective.  He plans to walk every single street of all five buroughs in New York City.  He estimates that will be  about 7,500 miles and it will take him a couple of years. Rock on!  You go, Matt!  I like reading Matt’s blogs because he is at turns funny and serious with some very interesting stories.

7)  Walking America.  Chris Allen is a machine.  He was walking across America last year and was planning to winter in Boulder, Colorado and then start up again come spring.  Unfortunately, because injuries had slowed him down, toward the end he really needed to make up some ground because it was getting seriously cold at night.  He walked through the night a couple of times because he was afraid of freezing to death if he had gone to sleep!  He put in some serious mileage the last week he was on the road because of it.  I’m still in awe!  So I figured you might want to read about the crazy stuff he went through, too.

So there you have it.  Some cool blogs, and some new info about me.  Now I need to go recuperate after writing this novel.   Whew!