Sarah at Are You Kidding Me?! nominated me for the Versatile Blogger Award.
Sarah cracks me up. Her tidbits involving her family never cease to entertain me, and I find her stories extremely relateable. You should check her out, especially if you have kids.
The rules of the VBA (which still stands for Visual Basic for Applications in my mind) are as follows:
- Thank the person who gave you this award. Thank you, Sarah!
- Include a link to their blog. Please visit her here.
- Next, select 15 blogs/bloggers that you’ve recently discovered or follow regularly. See Below.
- Nominate those 15 bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award — you might include a link to this site. I would think this would go with the last step as a given, but oh well.
- Finally, tell the person who nominated you 7 things about yourself. Here we go!
Seven things…
you probably didn’t know about me.
1. I earned the nick name Azul while working in an orphanage in the Dominican Republic, because I had blue hair.
2. I spent a summer working in a Christian Children’s Camp in Novosibirsk, Russia. The campground we stayed at was actually condemned, but that didn’t seem to bother the children.
3. Despite my character’s love of coffee, I hardly touch the stuff. I have, however, drunk a Red Bull nearly every day for the past 13 years. (I’m also among the populace that thinks saying “have drunk” sounds weird, even though it’s grammatically correct.)
4. When I was 15, I spent 5 weeks with my jaw wired shut. My favorite liquefied food was soft flour tacos, with sour cream.
5. I enjoy painting squirt guns and turning them into steam punk ray guns.
6. When I was a senior in high school, I planned on moving to New York to pursue theater. Then I looked at the statistics, analyzed my personality, and decided computer programming was more my style.
7. My arachno-hatred stems from when I had a hobo spider crawling around in my hair.
15 Nominations
Merriam-Webster says versatile means “able to do many things.” Taking that into account, I nominate the following people. Acceptance is completely optional.
Aldrea Alien
Melissa Maygrove
SD Neeve
Le&ndra Wallace
JeriWB
Southpaw
Kirsten at A Scenic Route
Cattitude and Gratitude
Alex J. Cavanaugh – He’s probably been nominated before, because he’s the king of the interwebs. But just in case he hasn’t, I’m throwing it out there.
Liz Blocker
Elizabeth Seckman
River Fairchild
Christine Rains
Lexa Cain
WriterlySam
I was going to nominate Crystal Collier, but it looks like she’s already received a nomination.
Again, acceptance is completely optional. I just think all of you are awesome (yes, I used the word awesome, Liz), and wanted to let you all know.
Did you learn anything new? Have you met these other bloggers? Have you been entertained by Sarah?
Thanks you, Loni! Yes, I have received the award before, but I appreciate you thinking of me.
Liquid tacos. I guess don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.
Not a coffee drinker either. Smells good, tastes awful.
I can occasionally drink coffee with my sugar. 🙂
Congrats on the award! And thanks for the nomination. 🙂
I loved reading your post. I’m impressed with your mission work. Cool.
Thank you!
Congratulations. Sounds like you’ve had a pretty interesting life. Yeah, VBA means Visual Basic to me too. I love computers and programming!
Creating efficiency is almost as fun as tossing characters into horrible situations. Almost.
Haha!! You know, I totally think of you every time I want to use the words ‘awesome’ or ‘amazing’. LOL. I think it’s entirely appropriate to use it this time, don’t worry!
Thanks so much for the nomination! I’ll post about this next week.
I have many thoughts on this post…. First, is ‘have drunk’ really grammatically correct? Wow. It just sounds so wrong. Second, I had blue hair for a while some years ago, too 🙂 Third, your poor jaw!!!!
Ever since you tweeted about that article, it’s been at the back of my mind. 🙂
“I’m also among the populace that thinks saying ‘have drunk’ ” Me too, me too. I don’t like “dived” for the same reason. Just don’t like the way it sounds.
I guess my last post (on spiders) was your least favorite post ever! LOL
Thanks for the nomination.
Oh yes, I cringed. My sis-in-law thinks the furry little ones are cute. >_<
That couldn’t have been easy working in a condemned children’s camp in Russia. Wow.
The hardest part was the communication barrier. I had functional Russian language skills, but the children had no English. One time, a girl said, “ya ne ponimayu” and I sighed and replied, “I know you don’t understand, but I don’t know how to say [statement] in Russian…” 🙁
Thanks for the nod 🙂 I’m the opposite of you in that I’ve never downed a Red Bull, but I covet a delicious cup of coffee every morning.
My husband is a huge coffee drinker, so we always have some in the house. 🙂
Hey Loni…
Saw this on G+ and came on over to congratulate you. Yes, you’re very versatile and deserving! I think I’ve told you before, but just had to say again how aesthetically pleasing I find your blog. Nice. Oh, and isn’t this interesting…when I was 17 I had to have my jaw wired shut for six weeks. Maxillofacial surgery. Witness Protection Program. Ha. Just joking about the WPP—it was a broken jaw. Everything was blended, even the times we had steak. My first meal after I was “cut and released” was a burrito and I could barely open my mouth to eat it!
Thank you!
Yeah, my first meal was french fries. It was tough even getting those in my mouth. I recall the first word I said afterwards was “wow” and it sounded so loud!
Thank you so much for the nomination, Loni! I gave up on awards a long time ago, as I’d forget to pass them on. 🙂
I can use a contraction – “I’ve drunk” but not “have drunk.” It sounds too weird.
Liquefied soft tacos? And they taste like them?
Add a bit of beef broth and yes!
I actually shuddered reading “spider crawling around in my hair.”
Nope … just … nope.
Thanks for the nomination, BTW. Now to think of seven things about me…
Yeah, it creeped me out too. I now react with violence to most spiders in my vicinity.
spider in hair… eee that must be scary!! Congratulations on the award 🙂
It was! Thanks!
That’s the most unique Seven Things I’ve ever real. You’re a real world traveler. So cool! Thanks for the nomination! That’s so sweet of you! 🙂
I still have places on my list to go. 🙂
Congratulations on your nomination! And your nominees are all great choices.
I enjoyed your 7 random facts. I had no idea you had blue hair once, or that you paint squirt guns. My nephews would love steam punk ray guns. 😉
Thank you!
My daughter really enjoys the squirt guns too (but I think I appreciate the styling more than she does). 🙂
Congrats on your nomination! Love your nominee choices! They are all fantastic bloggers!
I had no idea you were such a world traveler with a plethora of experiences (I was going to use the word amazing there, but decided against it). 🙂
I’m not a coffee drinker either…
😀 Thank you.
That was a highly entertaining & diverse list, Ms. Azul:) Your experiences are awesome fodder for storytelling! I’m with you on the spider-bashing, and no worries on the coffee, I’ll drink enough for the both of us (but the liquid-taco bar is all yours:)
Thank you!!
Sam
Hahaha. Thankfully, I haven’t had need of the liquid-taco bar for a while.
Thank you so much for thinking of me for this award–and look, I’ve finally shared some blog space with the amazing Alex J. Cavanaugh! I’m so flattered. 🙂
I can’t imagine living without coffee, which thankfully I could drink even with my jaw wired shut.
And I’d love to read more about your summer in Russia and your work in the orphanage.
I recall being sick while in Russia. They made their tea with milk. Bad things for a lactose intolerant person. >_< But there were some fun times. I've got a video of a few of the girls singing. Very pretty. The orphanage was a bit less pleasant, though I communicated easier there. I'm better with Spanish than I am with Russian. What struck me the most there was the barbed wire around the fence. It wasn't to keep orphanage kids in, it was to keep the street kids out.
It’s all fun and games until someone gets a spider in her hair. That is a bizarre phobia of mine. I have a whole post on it.
So, congrats, again, and thank you for all the wonderful praise. Geez, I wasn’t expecting all this. You are too sweet.
I love all of your 7 things. Every time I read one, I thought “No, THAT’S my favorite” and so on until the end when I realized they all rocked. #2 had me a bit weepy. Because I needed another reason to think you are awesome. But #4. Gah. I am so sorry. That is awful except where you found a new, magically delicious smoothie. (Eww…) And #5. Can you please post a picture of one of those sometime. You are so cool, Azul.
Oh, and also, is it illegal to use “awesome” on your site? I’ll make a note of it for future reference. I’m addicted to awesome—I think because I’m not a huge fan of exclamation points and using awesome really helps! Or maybe I’m making excuses for using it! No one will ever know!
I’m looking forward to checking out all the blogs you’ve nominated here.
Not illegal to use awesome. 🙂 Liz posted a link to Twitter with a challenge not to use awesome for a month or something. Trying to think of words to use in its place taxed my brain computing power. I’m now very conscious of every time I use it. It’s difficult because in the mind of the MC of my novellas, she is synonymous with awesome.
You’re loads of fun, Sarah, and I’m glad we’ve connected. Thank goodness for the Internet. I get to meet tons of wonderful people!
Thanks for the nomination, Loni! That’s so nice of you. And blue hair is pretty rockin’. 😉 We saw a girl at DQ last week who had this lovely shade of violet. It really looked natural, which seems strange now that I think of it…ha!
Hey, when I was a senior in high school I also planned on moving to New York to pursue theatre. I didn’t end up doing computer programming, but my significant other is a software engineer.
I spent a month in Russia about ten years ago. The language barrier did make things challenging, especially given that my best Russian is children’s songs. Incredibly useful.
Congrats on the award!
Congrats on the nomination, you are most deserving in my opinion.
What an amazing, awesome (there, thought I’d get them out of the way) life you have led thus far, and no doubt your future will be just the same, if not better. I’m with you on the coffee, but I’ve never touched a Red Bull in my life, the smell is enough to put me off! Blue hair. Well, as I’m of an age to have lived the punk era, my hair was a bright shade of yellow, plus the bondage trousers were a bonus. 😉 As to spiders, don’t get me started, I loath them all.
Thank you for the nomination by the way, I’m honoured that you considered me worthy. 🙂
Better late than never, right? You’re right- I was lounging on the beach on June 11th.
Your seven things are so much better than mine! I think it’a awesome that you’ve helped orphans. That’s so sweet. When all mine are grown and gone, my husband and I have mission work on our bucket list.
Thanks Loni!! I’ll have to think of seven more things…or would that get me too close to the embarrassing stuff?
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