Day 309

After more than 300 days of non-stop blogging, I finally won one of those awards I always see on other people's blogs. A big thank you to Sharkbytes at My Quality Day for giving me the Versatile Blogger award. I'm not sure I'm all that versatile since I basically write about the same things day-after-day, but I'll keep the award anyway. On receiving this award, I'm supposed to tell you seven things about myself that you don't already know and then pass the award on to four other people I think might deserve it. Sounds kind of like a chain letter, but I guess there's no harm done in passing the award along.

Bruce Coltin at Coltin1948 is certainly versatile, since he went from a career in sales and marketing to become one of the best writers in the blogosphere. Mona at Rebellious Arab Girl is equally versatile, always managing to combine an impeccable sense of design with honest and insightful writing. Chinaren gets the award for teaching me everything I know about China with a seemingly endless variety of personal experiences in his Living and Writing in China blog. I can't forget Jennifer at Writing to Survive either. She continues to weave ordinary daily life into extraordinary and original stories. Hmmm. So, how are these four even going to know they won the award? They might not read this blog. Hey, you guys with lots of these award badges on your blog. What do I do now?

Oh, I almost forgot. The seven things you probably don't know about me. 1: I actually can sew pretty well. 2: I flunked out of flight school because I always threw up in the plane when I took my flying lessons. 3: I went to high school in Fairbanks, Alaska. 4: I once had dinner with Rudy Vallee. 5: I made a documentary film about the police department in a town with no crime. 6: I have a piston from one of Richard Petty's cars. 7: I eat crystallized ginger like candy

Well, that's it I guess. I've probably inadvertently violated all the rules of blog awards by not putting my badge in the right place or something equally trivial, but this is as good as it's going to get.

While we're on the subject of blogging, I ended up buying an EC banner ad today when I plucked an e-mail out of my spam folder saying that there were only four of these ad spaces available and for a limited time they were only half price. You guys probably got exactly the same mail and wisely left it in your junk mail folder. I bet there are still four of these ads available for half price. You'd think I'd know better, since I'm in the advertising business myself, but I'm a sucker for things like this. I've bought online ads all over the place and still have no idea if any of them work. I don't even know where some of the ads are anymore, because I forgot to bookmark the sites running them. At any rate, it's like department store pioneer John Wanamaker used to say "I know I waste half the money I spend on advertising. The problem is, I don't know which half."

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day