March 2009 | The 3 R's: Reading, 'Riting, and Randomness

March 31, 2009 • randomness •

Blogiversary Wrap-Up: prizes for some, and a survey for you all!

I hijacked this survey from the blog of one of my Silicon Valley Moms Group associates. Cecily contributes to the Philadelphia Moms Blog, but this was posted on her personal blog, Uppercase Woman, on the recent occasion of its fifth Blogiversary. As you know, I just celebrated a Blogiversary of my own, and I always want to know more about my readers. Got a few minutes to answer some (mostly) painless questions? Here goes!

1. What do we have in common? This is by no means limited to the following possibilities: Books? Kids? Dogs? Lost? Twitter? California? Tennessee? Chocolate? Coffee?

2. What DON’T we have in common? None of the above?

3. How did you find my blog? If you came by way of someone else’s link or blogroll, please feel free to give them a mention/link here!

4. What do you enjoy about this blog, if anything? Hopefully there’s something – I’d like to think you’re not being force-fed reading this (unless you’re my husband, that is…)

5. Do you comment? If so, awesome! If not, care to say why not? (Answering this survey counts as commenting, by the way.)

6. What do you wish I’d shut up about? My feelings won’t be hurt if you tell me (sniffle, sniffle) – but there’s no guarantee you’ll get your wish :-).

7. What do you wish I’d talk more about? “Everything” and “nothing” are both reasonable answers, but it might help if you were more specific than that.

8. Where are you from? You can be as specific or general as you like.

9. What one question would you like me to answer? Anything’s fair game here – but it’s possible you may get an answer that’s total B.S. Take your chances!

10. Do you have a blog? If so, plug it here!

Since Feedburner tells me that this blog has well over 200 subscribers, I hope that means there are at least a few of you who actually read this thing – thanks! I’d love to see at least one-fourth of you answer at least a few of these questions in the comments, and that includes you lurkers – come out and play, won’t you?

And now…for those of you who entered my Blogiversary Giveaways, with the help of Random.org, here are the winners! The odds of winning some of the prizes were better than others. All of the winners have been contacted by e-mail. If I don’t hear from them with mailing addresses, I may need to move down to the next person on the list and offer it to her.

Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran, by Azadeh Moaveni
to Alyce of At Home with Books

Buffalo Gal, by Laura Pedersen
to OlympianLady (Tiffany) of The Phantom’s Lair

True Colors, by Kristin Hannah
to Anita Yancey

Amazon.com E-gift card
to Dawn of She Is Too Fond of Books

Congratulations to the winners, and thank you to everyone who entered!

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March 29, 2009 randomness

Questions from the universe to keep you busy while I’m gone

Happy birthday to ME, and greetings to you all from Disneyland! (Not really – I scheduled this post ahead of time. Didn’t I say I was taking my birthday off? And who blogs while at Disneyland, for goodness’ sake? Even I have my limits.) It’s been a little while since I did an all-Blogthings post, so I thought I’d lob a couple of quizzes at you to keep you entertained until I return with a […]

March 28, 2009 randomness

Saturday Review, birthday weekend edition – Travels in the Blogiverse

Bulletin Board **** My Blogiversary Giveaway closes TOMORROW, folks – if you haven’t entered yet, click on that link to see what your options are! Also: if you HAVE entered already, please make sure you have left me an e-mail address in the comments. If you’re the randomly-chosen winner of the $20 Amazon.com e-gift card, I will need to provide your e-mail address in the recipient info when I order it – I’d hate to […]

March 27, 2009 reading

TBIF: Thank blog it’s Friday! This week in memes and books

Mailbox Monday, hosted at The Printed Page Thanks to Jessica Lee at Penguin Group USA, I received a review copy of What to Read When: The Books and Stories to Read With Your Child – and All The Best Times to Read Them by Pam Allyn. The book will be in stores in a couple of weeks, and I’m looking forward to checking out this guide to family reading; I suspect that it could have […]

March 26, 2009 reading

Thursday Book Talk: “Never Let Me Go,” by Kazuo Ishiguro

Never Let Me Go: A NovelKazuo IshiguroVintage, 2006 (paperback) (ISBN 1400078776 / 9781400078776)Fiction, 304 pages First sentence: My name is Kathy H. I’m thirty-one years old, and I’ve been a carer now for over eleven years. Book description: As children Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of […]

March 25, 2009 reading

Weekly Geeks 2009-11: Don’t read much about history…

Ali proposed a “magical history tour” for Weekly Geeks this week, with a focus on Historical Fiction (contemporary novels with a historical setting), and offered four choices of topics to write about within that theme. I chose the second option (click on the link above to check out the others): Do you have a favorite book that really pulled you back in time, or perhaps gave you a special interest in that period? Include a […]

March 24, 2009 randomness, reading

Three things on Tuesday morning

I have some scraps wandering around in my head that don’t rate full posts of their own, so I’ve decided to inflict them on you en masse. This may become a recurring feature. You have been warned. I tweeted this on Monday morning: He’s not on Twitter. He doesn’t even have a computer. But would you wish my dad a happy 80th birthday today anyway ☺? And a few of Twitterville’s fine citizens actally did […]

March 23, 2009 'riting

He’s turning 80 and that’s no lie

My sister’s writing is more creative than mine, and she enjoys crafting comic poetry. She always composes the invitations for her sons’ birthday parties, and this year, she came up with one for their grandfather, who had a special party of his own yesterday: Eddie’s birthday has arrived How thrilled we are that he’s alive. He’s turning eighty and that’s no lie. He still likes to eat his cherry pie. He wants you to come […]

March 21, 2009 randomness

Saturday Review 3-21: This week around the blogiverse

Bulletin Board ****PSA of the week, via Donna (SoCal Mom), Los Angelista, and the LA Moms Blog: emergency preparedness (and the chance to get a free “disaster kit”) ****Plans are moving forward for the Book Blogger Retreat. It’s tentatively scheduled for July 18-19 in Portland, OR. Unfortunately for me, I’ll have to miss it – that’s the weekend before BlogHer’09 in Chicago – but it looks like Trish (Hey Lady!) and her team are making […]

March 20, 2009 reading

TBIF – Thank blog it’s Friday! This week in memes and books

The questions at the end of each section are for you to answer in comments, should you choose to do so – I hope you will, at least for one or two! “Mailbox Monday,” hosted at The Printed Page I’ve given up bookstore shopping for Lent (how many weeks till Easter?), but I’m still picking up new books here and there… I mentioned in TBIF a couple of weeks ago that a LibraryThing Early Reviewers […]

March 19, 2009 reading

Thursday Book Talk: “Gatsby’s Girl,” by Caroline Preston

Gatsby’s Girl: A Novel Caroline Preston Mariner Books, 2007 (paperback) (ISBN 0618872612 / 9780618872619) Fiction, 336 pages First sentence: Scott Fitzgerald’s daughter called long distance, out of the blue. Book description: Before he wrote some of the twentieth century’s greatest fiction, before he married Zelda, F. Scott Fitzgerald loved Ginevra, a fickle young Chicago socialite he met during the winter break from Princeton. But Ginevra threw over the soon-to-be-famous novelist, and the rest is literary […]

March 18, 2009 'riting

Hobbies and Friends and catching up on Assignments

I missed last week’s Weekend Assignment because I didn’t get inspired with an answer for it until the week was nearly over, and by then I had the week’s posts all scheduled out. Therefore, this week you’re getting two Assignments for the price of one post (but I promise I’ll try not to go on too long with either one!). Weekend Assignment #257: It’s just a hobby of mine…, via guest professor Laura Weekend Assignment […]

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