Since I’m still trying to regain my footing, after our recent medical emergencies, I thought perhaps lighter blog fare made more sense for a Monday morning.
Many thanks to Eric Goebelbecker from Dog Spelled Forward (both dog training and blog) for tagging me into the Versatile Blogger Award game.
If you haven’t already, I recommend tuning into his ongoing series of blog posts called “Real Man’s Guide to Dog Training.” In a biz flooded with women, he is carving out a niche as the go-to guy who can explain things in ways that other guys understand. I think this is super-duper smart because I believe that it’s very easy for men, in particular, to gravitate to heavy-handed dog training philosophies and methods.
The next step in this cross-blog lovefest is for me to tell you 7 things that you don’t know about me. That’s kind of hard since we’ve been blogging for YEARS, and I tell you guys all kinds of things. But, let’s see what kind of trivia I muster …
1. I’m allergic to crab meat and sesame oil. The first one I learned during dinner before junior prom. The second revealed itself after a massage where the spa used sesame oil. Both incidents made me look like a swollen monster (as in small children pointed, screamed, and cried at my puffy face). Both required a course of steroids.
2. I hate the words cornucopia, twine, and disingenuous. The cornucopia thing actually stems from Tom hating the word so much. Apparently, he had an elementary school teacher who drove home the idea of “horn of plenty” a bit too much and somehow scarred him. Twine as a sound just grates on me. It’s an ugly word. And, well, disingenuous is one of those pretentious words that reveals too much about the user.
3. I take pride in being a good wife … even though I consider myself a feminist. It isn’t so much the traditional role appeal, though I do most of the homekeeping tasks. For me, it’s more about being a loyal, helpful, and considerate partner. It’s teamwork, rooted in marriage.
4. For many years, I attended 24+ strangers’ weddings each year for my feature column in The Denver Post. That’s how I got my “in,” writing about weddings (for a while) for The New York Times. (While the steady income was nice, I do NOT miss losing so many weekends, holidays included.)
5. I’m working on a novel and find that kind of writing MUCH harder than the journalism and copywriting I do every day.
6. The first-ever short story I wrote won an award.
7. The first-ever essay I wrote about Lilly will be included in a book about dogs being our heroes (set to publish later this year).
The next step in this process is for me to tag a whole bunch of other bloggers. I don’t want to bog anyone down with an obligation, so I’ll simply point out that I’ve added a whole slew of new blog links to our sidebar. I met many of these people at BlogPaws in April, and Eric already tagged many of them in his post.
So, I thought that perhaps I’d make a few specific recommendations for a few blog friends (and vice versa):
For Cowgirl By Proxy … check out My Ex-Wife’s Wedding Dress.
For Dog Geek … I’d suggest Smart Dog University.
For Days of Speed & Slowtime Mondays … take a peek at It’s a Dog’s Life for border collie hijinks.
For Romping and Rolling in the Rockies … follow the adventures of Go Pet Friendly. Some day, they’d love to live our area.
Thank you for the mention and the reciprocity!
Congrats on the Versatile Blogger!! And, thanks so much for the mention. I just read 2 posts over at “Romping and Rolling” and I’m already addicted. The photography is fantastic!
I didn’t realize dog training was female dominated. Kind of odd then that Joe Public knows about the Dog Whisperer but no other names in the biz?