It never ceases to shock, stun and amaze me that people actually read the crap I write on this blog! What stuns me even more is that they like the crap that I write on this blog!! I've just been nominated for a second time, pop over and have a look at Senorita Still Standing :)
The rules are simple; give 11 facts about you, answer 11 questions then nominate 11 people, so here goes!
First of all, I would like to thank JR Barker, Children's Author from http://jrbarker101.wordpress.com/the-blog/ for this gracious nomination. Please check out her awesome blog.
Looking for a little inspiration today?
I've got to thank Asian Cinema Blog for sending this award my way. When she told me I'd been nominated, she stated, "I see you already have one, so another couldn't hurt."
How true.
I've always wanted to refer to my site as an "award-winning site" and now I can, several times over. Due to the generosity of my fellow…
My mother always told me I was special (she still does actually) and even though I knew that she thought so, I knew it was because all mothers think their children are.
But today, I've had no less than three different bloggers nominate me for the Epically Awesome Award of Epic Awesomeness!
First, Kim over at Tranquil Dreams, then Natasha over at…
I've been very kindly nominated for the 'epically awesome award of epic awesomness' by Kim over at Tranquil Dreams, so a big thank you to her :D check out her blog if you haven't already, you won't regret it :D Also a nomination from Meera Darji, who also has a brilliant blog that you should definitely have a look at :D…
A huge thank you goes to Mike at Mikes Film Talk, who thinks more of me than I think of me. By giving me this award, he has honored me while simultaneously depriving me of someone on whom I would have liked to bestow this award. Mike certainly deserves it. He has a great site that is only partly film-centric. Mike is a lot more than a film critic. He is a literary omnivore, writing everything from personal history and fiction, to book and movie reviews. And such excellent writing it is. Please make sure to visit him. You’ll be glad you did.
I owe a debt of gratitude to the folks over at Moment Matters for originating this unique award. They’ve also created a fine logo for recipients to display on their walls. There are words and music to accompany it. I’m sorry I don’t have the music, but following are the words and they’re lovely:
Awarding the people who live in the moment,
The noble who write and capture the best in life,
The bold who reminded us what really mattered -
Savoring the experience of quality time.
Pretty nice! As with most awards in the WordPress Blogging community, there are a few rules. Simple guidelines. Not onerous, but specific. Since this is my first encounter with this award, here they are. They are simple:
Rules:
Resources:
I’ve included these since they are a legacy from Mike’s post and provides guidelines if you need help:
Acceptance Speech:
I’m genuinely touched by this award. Touched and grateful. Receiving appreciation from ones peers is a special kind of recognition. It means more than I can easily express.
Living in the moment has become a way of life. After finally admitting I have no control over the future, I relaxed, stopped trying to push the river, and began to enjoy whatever came, even stuff I would have considered “bad news” in my misspent youth. I’m a lot happier since I stopped trying to force life to go my way. Living in the moment and going with the flow takes a whole lot less effort than fighting the current. Whatever chills and thrills come with the ride, I’m ready. Remarkably, I keep discovering it’s fun. Live and learn. I wish I’d learned a little earlier!
This moment — this exact moment in time — IS your life! This is the day you’ve been waiting for. It will never come again. Enjoy it.
I am delighted to accept The Best Moment Award originated by MomentMatters.com … another site definitely worth checking out.
I never stop being awestruck when I realize I have influenced someone in a positive way, maybe even made a difference in one or more lives in this mad, mad world. Again, thank you Mike!
Blogging has become very important to me. I have always been a writer, but until I started blogging, I never wrote about personal things. As a professional, I wrote what I was paid to write. Now, I write from my head and my heart. It has been life changing. Everything inspires me. Other bloggers — especially Mike — have influenced me in more ways than I can list. But in the end, all of life is inspiration.
To all of my friends and followers, thank you for taking time out of your busy lives to share mine. The blogging community has given me a sense of purpose, participation, comradeship and a much broader life-view than I ever had before. There’s a lot of ugly stuff going on everywhere. Scary stuff, unfair, wrong, dangerous, evil. We haven’t the power fix everything, but we have some influence as individuals and collectively. We can help each other through difficult times, rejoice with each other over triumphs (they are few enough), and maybe give something back to our human community.
Everything we share has value. Knowledge, memories, pictures that express beauty or expose evil. Stories we write, books we read and recommend. Movies we see and share. Humor that banishes sadness. It’s not just big ideas that matter. Small things resonate and change lives too. Never think the ordinary parts of life are not worth exploring. They may be the most important of all.
Anything we do to make someone feel good, help them think in a different direction, see the world in a new way, is a deed well done. By giving of ourselves, we continue to grow the chain of good will around the world. If blogging has any ultimate purpose, that’s it.
I have saved every “like” I’ve ever gotten and will continue to do so until my email explodes. I am so glad you like me . What a miracle this virtual community is to me. You touch me. I love reading your comments, love answering them. Love writing them, too because I want you to know I appreciate your work. That people follow me makes me glow in the dark. No really, it does. It saves a lot of electricity!
For all of you who I follow, each of you enriches me. Your views about the world, your pictures of it, your understanding and your humor brighten my days, keep my mind alive and make my world exciting.
Like Mike, I have felt the wings of the dark angel brush me. Life is infinitely precious with all of its perils and problems.
Thank you all for making my world a better place to live, and thank you Mike for appreciating the best of me.
The winners for the Best Moment Award are:
I have had to think hard about this one because I can’t give it back to Mike, who I would have given it to. Like Mike, I’m going to limit this to people who really actually truly have influenced me and changed me way of thinking, writing, looking at reality or unreality, as you would have it.
To everyone else, I know you and appreciate you. I’m trying to follow the leader in making this award specific to people who, as they live in their moment and in sharing them, have made their moments mine.
I apologise in advance to anyone who may feel slighted. Most of you have gotten awards from me in the past and will again in the future. This one is specific; I hope I’ve chosen well. There are a few of you to whom I don’t give awards because you don’t want them. But I appreciate you anyhow! I have many wonderful followers and I don’t like having to choose. But sometimes — and this is one of those time — that’s the way it is.
My awardees are a varied bunch, but each is great in his/her own way.
The last part of this Award process is the instruction to share this with your followers and to tweet your “success” with the hash tagged #MomentMatters. And as soon as I figure out how to do that, I will!
Congratulations to all my winners and I want you to know that you have touched me.
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I passed the 60,000 hit mark today, so it seemed an opportune time to accept the Versatile Blogger Award from Dorothy at Eyes to Heart.
It is a pleasure and an honor to receive this award and I am grateful to be found worthy. Dorothy creates images and matches them with words that catch the essence of things, like starlight in a bottle. Some remarkable imagery that I urge you to explore. She is special and has a unique perspective. If you need an example, the following picture of a piece of the Sydney Opera House is a fine example of the beauty she sees.
Recognition is always gratifying and it’s lovely when an award and a milestone coincide. This one seems especially appropriate and timely. When members of the blogging community recognize one as having some sort of genuine talent, it makes up for a lot.
If prophets have no honor in their home town, bloggers don’t get no respect from family and friends. They may love us, but they know no matter how wise and witty we seem to be online, we are really the same jerks they’ve known since we were kids and probably even jerkier. Fortunately, blogging gives us a fresh start, letting us show our best face to the world. Our new friends don’t have to know about the other stuff, things we barely remember ourselves because after so many tequila shots, who remembers? It’s good to have a wider world ’cause the folks who had to haul your unconscious butt home in the back of a VW beetle will never give you an award for being versatile, inspiring, or anything else.
The Versatile Blogger Award is a favorite award because it seems more “me” than other blogging awards. I’ve never aimed to be a particular kind of blogger, never focussed on one area to the exclusion of others. Versatile and mutable would be good descriptors for me as a blogger and a person. I respond to the feelings of others as if they were my own. I react to events rather than marching to a particular drum or along a specific path. When I was younger, I could be enlisted in particular causes, but as I’ve gotten older, I try to use my energy efficiently and let life and the universe direct where my efforts will be best used. For the astrologically inclined, it’s a Pisces thing. We are tidally related to our world. As the waters ebb and flow, so do we. We do not march nor follow dogma, but can create quite a strong current when we direct our flow to a purpose.
I don’t know from day-to-day what will catch my fancy, what event, dream or thought will set my fingers flying over the keys. The relative importance of my memories and how I feel about them isn’t fixed. I feel very differently about almost everything now than I did a few years ago and will continue to change as life twists me into new shapes. I doubt 16-year-old me would recognize 66-year-old me. I’m not even sure they would like each other.
Now to the business of accepting this award. There are some rules that go with it. I bend these rules as I bend all rules. You’ll just have to deal with it. If this were the Oscars, I’d make a long, boring speech. I would thank everyone I’ve ever known until someone gave me the hook and dragged me bodily from the stage, but this isn’t the Academy Awards and I’ve always thought those speeches were stupid. I’ll just say “Thank you” and get on with it to good parts.
These are the traditional rules for The Versatile Blogger Award:
Since I’m not traditional, I do things a little differently. I feel I’ve told everybody just about everything they could possible want to know about me, so I tell you about my world in pictures. I so not limit myself to naming a specific number of blogs or bloggers as nominees. Not everyone wants or accepts awards and sometimes, you’ve given awards to just about everyone you know and it’s time to give it a rest for a while. Fortunately (or not?) for my community, I have a little list so after you have viewed my gallery of selected images, you may find your name listed. Some are people to whom I always give awards because I always think they deserve them. Others are recent members of my community.
Catnip/Awakenings I have intentionally omitted because she is fighting other battles right now. Sharla, I love you, and you are not forgotten. Take care of Jim and be strong. I’ll give you a dozen or so awards when you are ready to deal with them.
Now the fun part. Here are the blogs I nominate for The Versatile Blogger Award. I hope when you have a moment you’ll take an opportunity to pay them a visit. These blogs have moved and inspired me each in their own way, and while I’m not always able to visit as regularly as I would like, I do appreciate you and you matter to me more than you might imagine.
Thanks to all of you and I encourage everyone who stops by here to check out these wonderful bloggers. They are creative, original voices that will make you smile, make you think and maybe, inspire you to try new things and go new places.
To anyone I left out, I am sorry. Some of you I know don’t want awards, others I’ve awarded very recently. No one is really forgotten. I’ll catch you on the next round!
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It was a visit worthy of Jane Austin. We were fed and fed again. Entertained, charmed, chatted and entertained some more. I took pictures of the house, the land, the snow, the stream.
We watched the Oscars, and we saw almost all the movies that had been nominated (except the ones we didn’t want to see and Les Mis, which we didn’t get to).
We had already seen Lincoln in the movies. We watched Argo, Skyfall, The Hobbit, Flight, Ted (not nominated, but after Flight, we needed a comedy) and Life of Pi. A veritable movie banquet.
And OH the food. Such good food. Our host and hostess cooked up a storm. It was movie maven and gourmet heaven, not to mention a great house and land perfect for photography.
Good friends, good food, great movies, beautiful scenery … It was an award-winning weekend.
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