Happy Birthday to Bobbarama!

My most favorite inkblot in the Blogosphere is having a birthday today (November is a great month for birthdays - almost as good as September!) so please take the time to pop on by bobbarama dot com and leave some birthday best wishes for the little fella! And if anyone can find out how old he is, I'll come up with some sort of cool prize for you!

Happy Birthday, Bob, and best wishes for a wonderful year with many more to follow!

Sending Thoughts and Prayers to a Blog Buddy

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I got this from my dear friend Callie at Scrappin' With Life ... and I have to say that her timing as perfect as I had been wondering how Bob was doing with all of these fires. I hope that he is safe and that his home is not in any direct danger but I'm sure that just being in San Diego County is a horrifying experience right now no matter where you are. To that end, as Callie posted: "Our good friend Bobbarama needs our thoughts and our prayers. Bob is located right in the way of the dreadful fires that are currently sweeping through the Great State of California.

I would like you all to add your name to this post and then pass it on to someone else so that we can send Bob our best wishes and let him know that we care about him and that we are thinking about him. Please copy this post, post it on your blog and pass it on and let's all let Bob know we are with him during his time of need."

Bob - wherever you are and however you're doing - you are in my thoughts and in my prayers. Be safe, my friend!

The Breakout Blogger Award

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Recently my most favorite inkblot in the entire universe celebrated his first blogiversary and, true gentleman that he is, he gave out the gifts rather than receiving them. The one and only Bobbarama came up with not one but two new blogging awards that are sure to be coveted by any and all bloggers throughout the Blogosphere.

The first is the "Best Kept Secret" award which goes to "a blogger with great style and wit and warmth who hasn’t been discovered yet." It's a lovely award and Bob awarded the first of the awards to five very deserving bloggers who I'm sure won't stay a secret for very long ...

• The Kat House ~~ I love her Sunday Samplings links to other bloggers with great posts.
• A Nice Place in the Sun ~~ Be sure to check out her fun Tuesday’s Question feature.
• Idle Minutes ~~ Don draws a stunning illustration for every post. Fantastic.
• Pyreflies over Zanarkand ~~ Great fun … great photos … great blogger.
• The Frog Bog ~~ Stock tips with a humorous spin … and so much more
  

The second award is "The Break Out Blogger Award" which, as Bob puts it, "casts a spotlight on bloggers who are just beginning to draw lotsa attention — the equivalent of a song with a bullet on Billboard’s Top 100 chart. Lotsa good posts. Lotsa good buzz. These bloggers are going places in a hurry." Again, Bob chose five outstanding recipients for this most cool award ...

• Christy’s Coffee Break ~~ Every blogger’s best friend. Reviews, poetry, awards, links.
• Polliwog’s Pond ~~ Warm, witty posts about life on an island and on the ‘Net. Fun stuff.
• Ordinary Folk ~~ A mini-empire in the making. A comic alien, blog reviews, great art.
• The Pisstakers ~~ Amusing, satirical posts on tech and news articles. Lotsa laughs.
• Mimi Writes ~~ The Queen of Memes and the Home of the Peace Globes.

I am familiar with the last four on the list and will have to make the acquaintance of the first as if Bob gave her an award, she's got to be good! I know the others are all excellent bloggers and if they aren't part of your daily read, they should be. By the by, it was Mike of Ordinary Folk who designed the awards for Bob and didn't he just do the best job ever?

One of my favorite bloggers is a recipient of one of those very first "Breakout Blogger Awards" and he, in turn, was more than nice enough to award one to me. Ed, of The Pisstakers, has been a staple in my Google Reader for as long as I've had a feed reader. Ed not only brings you the best in humor and techy news throughout the Blogosphere but he hosts the MyBlogLog Sunday feature that not only gets you a mini-review as a permanent part of his extensive archives but also gets you a lovely link back to a PR5 blog. For those of you who worry about your numbers, that's a major feather in your blogging cap! I have been lucky enough to be captured in a screen-shot of his sidebar while visiting on Sunday mornings more times than I can count.

Ed's choices for the "Breakout Blogger Award" were the following:

• The one and only Lord Likely, a true gentleman and scholar and complete and utter bastard, currently terrorizing 19th century USA with his tongue in cheek and Lord Palmerston in hand.
• The one and only Linda of Are We There yet? a bloggerette major, safe driver and killer singer whose birthdays appear to have all come nearly at once.
• The one and only TechIT Easy, whose leader, Jeremy Fain, has occupied France under the guise of Microsoft. He is stealthily enlisting a stunning international line-up of tech bloggers par excellence and to cap it all, he even has a sense of humor too.
• The one and only I Eat Snowman Poop who never ceases to amaze me with her turns of phrase and whacky humor
• The one and only Wolf Bernz who worked through being scammed and finally produced a video upload site with plenty of potential for great things.

Trust me when I tell you that I am tickled pink and beyond honored to have received this award from a man whose wit and intelligence I truly admire. To have been included in the second round of receiving one of these spiffy new awards is something that I am just completely and totally thrilled about. Bet you never could've guessed that, could you??

Okay, all humble acceptance speeches aside, it's now my turn to give this award to several other bloggers that I feel are deserving. It's a tough call because there are so very many good blogs that I read on a regular basis and they are all breakouts in their own right but the instructions say to "give the award to three to five of my Breakout Bloggers" and, for once, I'm going to follow the rules! Go figure!

Without further ado, I now present to you my choices for the "Breakout Blogger Award":

• Duward Discussion: Jamie has become like the sister I never had; a gal who enjoys history and Broadway shows. Her intelligence shines through in every single post she writes and she is always able to make me laugh at the times I really need it. If you're looking for quality posts and a quality blog, look no further - you have arrived!
  
• Alien in a Foreign Field and Whitterer on Autism: How she does it I don't know but Maddie manages to write two fantastic blogs while keeping up with her two autistic sons and one very patient and understanding daughter all while trying to maintain her sanity while spending way too much time in a dentist's chair! The word "admiration" fails to come even close! Stop by either or both of her two blogs and you'll see what I mean.
  
• Wading Through My Stream of Consciousness: Katherine is one of my newest daily reads and I have come to truly love the depth and feeling with which she writes. On her sidebar under the title "What You Need to Know", Katherine states "I try to always be a good person....I may not always be a nice person....but I always try to be a good person." You can't ask for much better than that!

I hope if you have the time you'll check out these three fantastic ladies and come to enjoy their blogs as much as I do. Jamie, Maddie, and Katherine - it's a pleasure to be on the same awards page as the three of you and now if you'll be so kind as to head over to the Awards Page at Bobbrama's for the instructions and code it would be greatly appreciated!

Once again a big thank you to Ed, I truly am honored!

Win An Originally Designed Coffee Mug Contest!

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Sticky Post!
Scroll Down Below This Post for New Stuff!

I've wanted to do a blog contest ever since I won some wicked cool personalized M&Ms from Bobbarama and also got some delicious gummi bears from The Pisstakers. It was just so neat to get prizes in the mail and I had a lot of fun with the subsequent posts, too. But I was never sure what I could offer as a prize until recently when Amanda opened her on-line store, Artistic Intoxication, at CafePress.com.

I ordered a couple of the coffee mugs she offers and when they arrived at the house I thought "perfect prize!". Plus it will give the kid some additional promotion and plugging your kids' endeavors is one of the things we parents do best (I believe it's in the parental contract under paragraph 52, subsection 12b)!

"I Feel Like Death Eating a Cracker"

"Heart"

So how can you win one of these great coffee mugs that are large and hefty, 15 oz. ceramic beverage vessels in your choice of the two designs shown? Easy! Just enter my "When Have You Felt Like Death Eating a Cracker?" contest! Entering is easy - just write a post telling me about a time that you truly felt like Death eating a cracker, include a link to Artistic Intoxication, a link back to my blog, then leave me a comment letting me know you're up to the challenge and you're in the running for a really cool coffee mug shipped directly to your door from CafePress with an original design by Amanda on it!

The Artist Known as "Art Munkey"

Contest closes next Friday, August 17th, at midnight and a winner will be picked at random from all entrants. If you don't win, not to worry - both of these great mugs are available at Artistic Intoxication along with an array of other neat products and if this contest takes off, I might just do another one for a t-shirt some time down the road!


Don't have a blog of your own? Hmmm ... now might be a good time to start one!

A Weekend Wrap-Up of Stuff

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Anyone who read my post yesterday titled Tickled Pink at the Mall might remember the picture I posted of a beverage that I had while surfing the internet at the Seattle's Best Coffee Cafe at a Borders store near the mall where Amanda was meeting a friend. For those who don't remember, missed it, or just wanted to see it a second time I shall post it again simply because it looks so downright yummy ...

Doesn't that just make your mouth water? Oops ... hold on, I just drooled on my keyboard ... okay, now that I've got that cleaned up ... this beverage is a Handshaken Coldbrew Marble Mocha Latte topped with whipped cream, chocolate sauce, and shaved white chocolate. It was one of the most delicious drinks I have had in a very long time and I don't even want to think about what the calorie count was, especially considering I had more or less started a diet yesterday (I'm thinking we should go with "less" on that!). It was almost better than milk chocolate-covered Oreos which are better than pretty much anything on the face of the planet! Mmmmm ... cookies ...

Other than for torture purposes, the reason I have mentioned my decadent coffee beverage again today is because Jen and I decided to order in Chinese at work this afternoon for lunch as when you're working 16 hours it's hard to bring food in for the entire day. I was a good girl and had chicken and soup but couldn't pass up my fortune cookie as what's Chinese food without a fortune cookie? The meal just seems so unfinished until you open your cookie and see what words of wisdom there are for you inside. Mine today?

Today is probably a huge improvement over yesterday.

Uhm, looking at that drink again and the fact that I was on a day off yesterday to boot - I. Don't. Think. So. 'Nuff said there!

Meanwhile, around the Internet today I found a couple of other interesting things I thought I would pass along. First off from Trav's Thoughts is this great post: "Email and thank a Marine." Please stop by and see how you, too, can send a quick thank you to our troops fighting overseas. Travis got the post from The Ice Box who got it from Atlas Shrugs. I think this would be a great thing to make its way around The Blogosphere and a fantastic way to show our men and women in the military that we appreciate them.

From Saturday Stuff at Polliwog's Pond I found this fun little webpage where you can "Simpsonize" yourself just by uploading a photo and waiting for the cartoon magic to happen. I've never really wanted to be yellow but who can resist being turned into a Springfield-ite? Or is that Springfield-izen? Springfield-ion? D'oh! Just go have fun with it! Some might say this was an improvement!

In other news - Bobbarama has the eighth edition of the Humor Carnival going on over at his place; there's still time to join in on the Saturday Comeback Challenge that Mimi Lenox presides over at Dating Profile of the Day; while over at The Freelance Cynic Simon is having himself a major case of writer's block so go on over and give him a cyber kick-in-the-pants to see if that helps him get going again!

Lastly - my friend Ed, the man behind The Pisstakers, is offering a snazzy little contest widget over on his blog that you can either install on your own blog to keep up-to-date with the great contests offered that are out there or add an entry of your own should you find yourself hosting a contest of some sort.

Speaking of contests, I am thinking of hosting one myself in order to promote my daughter's on-line store Artistic Intoxication over at Cafe Press. Now tell me - who wouldn't want their very own Death Eating a Cracker t-shirt?? Details to follow as soon as I figure them out!

Here's hoping all your todays are wonderful and your tomorrows are even better!

Behold the Long-Awaited M&Ms!

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At long last it's the final chapter in the Personalized M&M Saga that began way back on April 3rd when I found out that I had won the contest to be the 500th commenter at Bobbarama - the very funny humor blog of an inkblot named Bob (who looks rather like a smiley-faced M&M with hair himself!)

I'm sure that when I won the contest, Bob had no earthly clue that it would take me over three weeks and seven different posts to finally decide what to put on the M&Ms but it turned out to be the dilemma of a lifetime that was finally resolved with not one but two polls wherein I asked you, my faithful readers, to cast votes for your favorite sayings. Had it been left to me I might well have ended up with M&Ms emblazoned with "duh ..." and "uhm ..." on them!

When I arrived home today, the above box was sitting on the front porch and immediately brought a smile to my face as I knew that all of the waiting was over and inside would be not just any M&Ms but my M&Ms. Not to be overly dramatic but the excitement was just about as good as Christmas morning as a child when you come downstairs and see all of those presents under the Christmas tree! Granted, it's the middle of May and the box was sitting under the mailbox but I'm sure you get the idea!

Even though I wanted to rip right into the box as soon as I came in the house I decided to be an adult about things and changed out of my work uniform first, read my latest utility bill (and gasped in shock and dismay at the amount listed), and then thumbed through the rest of the junk that passes for mail these days. Finally Amanda told me to quit fooling around and open up the box for crying out loud!

Inside the cardboard box was a foam container and inside that was an abundance of bubble wrap along with the above four packages of my personalized M&Ms. Aren't they pretty? Amanda immediately snatched up a package and attempted to beat a hasty retreat out of the kitchen with it. I managed to stop her and a hand-to-hand battle ensued whereupon I wrested the bag from the hands of a hungry teenager! As a way of killing time until I actually opened one of the packages, she began popping the bubble wrap which was annoying but at least kept her from devouring an entire bag of M&Ms in what would surely have been no time flat!

Because I'm getting old and apparently blind, I really wasn't able to read the sayings on the candies very well until I took the above close-up picture! Part of the reason that some of them are upside down is because I couldn't even see well enough to position them all in the same direction! If I could make one suggestion to the good folks over at the M&M factory - they might want to change the printing to the same color as the lone "M" on the front of the candy as that's in gray and much easier to read than the black print - at least for those of us who really should wear glasses but are stubbornly refusing!

Upon completion of the photo session, I finally allowed Amanda to eat some of the M&Ms and then sat down to write this post. Halfway through she came into the living room and grabbed the bag that sat next to me on the couch. When I told her to give them back she asked "Why? Do they have your name on them? Besides, they're telling me to eat them!" Ah yes, my daughter the wise ass, I have no idea where she would have come by such a trait!

In conclusion, a big thank you once again to Bob for giving me the opportunity to have so much fun with this and for such a fantastic prize! The only thing that would have made it better would have been to have Bob deliver them in person but I guess it's a long trip from San Diego just to deliver candy! I'll be taking one bag to work with me tomorrow to show off over there and hiding the other two before my chocolate-crazed teen decides that they need to melt in her mouth and not in my hand!

You're all welcome to help yourself to a cyber-handful!

The Weekend Wrap-Up

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Normally on Saturday I do the Photo Scavenger Hunt but decided to opt out this week due to several factors with the first and foremost being the fact that I couldn't find a picture of anything with the theme of "five" and just didn't have the time to go out and take a new picture either.

It has been a busy week between the My Chem concert and a mixed-up schedule at work. I've barely had a chance to even look at my favorite blogs, never mind leave any comments, and I feel like I'm still playing catch-up with just about everything. Add on the fact that I want to get up to visit my mother today for Mother's Day in lieu of tomorrow as I have to work and I just don't have the time to dedicate to the Photo Hunt that I usually do. My entire blogging schedule has been thrown off this week - augh!!! Oh well, it was worth it to have reached "epic Mom" status.

So, in the meantime, what else has been going on? For those who are curious about my personalized M&Ms and their status, I had an email from Bob of bobbarama this morning to advise me that my 3.1 pounds of chocolaty goodness should be arriving on Monday. 3.1 pounds?? Woohoo!!! And they're mine! Mine! All mine! Bwaahaahaahaa! I shall be sure to post a picture of this most monumental prize so that you can all be jealous!

In other blog happenings, Ed of The Pisstakers recently posted his review of my blog that I second-hand won as the result of Polli of Polliwog's Pond giving her second win of gummi bears and a review to me. You can check out Ed's review here and I wish that you would and let me know what you think.

For those of you that might remember the "review" that I got from italk2much.com back on January 30th (and if you don't, you can certainly read it by clicking here) where I was one step up from sucking, I must say that this review from Ed is quite glowing and complimentary - even though he does point out that I have "the mother of all sidebars" which is similar to a comment made in that other review.

Sigh ... what's a blogger to do? I have tried trimming it down from time to time but there are just so many good blogs that I read and other things that I want to put over there to the right that I just get carried away! I've been thinking I should get in touch with my totally awesome blog designer, Se7en, and ask him about going to a three-column format (though I'm not sure how or if that would work for this particular layout). Chances are good, too, that if I go to three columns then I would have double "the mother of all sidebars"!

Meanwhile, over at Pretty Good on Paper, Caveblogem studied the words used in my blog to add to his "Which Words Do You Own?" study that he is compiling. The word cloud that he did for my blog ended up looking like this:


You can click on the picture to get a bigger look to see what words "I own". Per the post, "Linda added 630 new words to the vocabulary database, quite a lot of new words after seventeen blogs and a total of more than a quarter of a million words (I was expecting maybe 450)." I think that means I use a lot of words! If you'd like to read the rest of Caveblogem's post on my blog and use of words, click here (I'm in a "click here" kinda mood today apparently!) Also, if you're interested in seeing what words you own, volunteers are being accepted!

I think that about catches me up with the things I've been meaning to post about this week and just never got the chance. For those of you who are anxiously awaiting your questions from me for your 5 Question Meme, I promise to have those out to you soon and I thank you for your patience!

Okay, I need to attend to my "other" life now! Hope everyone has a fantastic Saturday!

And the winner is ...

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It seems that I finally have the winners in my personalized M&Ms polls - in a very round-about sort of way! When I wrote my post earlier today about the tie in the voting, I was under the impression that I had effectively closed the first poll and at that time it had 108 votes which had resulted in the second place tie. Hence the reason I posted the tie-breaker poll.

Well, either I am more technologically incompetent than I thought or the "close poll" button didn't work as people were still able to vote on the original poll which I am now officially closing at 129 votes whether more votes come in or not! So, based on the 129 votes in the first poll and the 20 votes in the second poll, I have tallied up the numbers and the winners are {{a drum roll, please!}} ... with 53 votes - Eat Me, You Fool and with 45 votes - Linda Rocks!

Too bad there weren't enough letters for Linda Has Rocks in Her Head! as that would have made this so much easier right from the get-go! A big thank you to everyone who cast their votes and for helping me to make up my mind. And for all of those who think that I rock - thank you even more, I am flattered that you think so! Now to get the results off to Bob before he gives all my M&Ms away ...

Verification of the results:

The first poll:

What should I put on my personalized M&Ms?

Answer 1...Linda Rocks! 27% (36 votes)

Answer 2...Eat Me, You Fool 40% (53 votes)

Answer 3...Dispatch Goddess 20% (27 votes)

Answer 4...Vitamins Anyone? 6% (8 votes)

Answer 5...I Cannot Decide! 7% (9 votes)

Total voters for this poll: 129

The second poll:

What is your vote to break the tie?

Answer 1...Linda Rocks! 45% (9 votes)

Answer 2...Dispatch Goddess 55% (11 votes)

Total voters for this poll: 20

We have a tie ...

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Well, this is a rather unexpected circumstance in the poll for what sayings to put on my personalized M&Ms ... it seems that there is a tie for the second place answer!

With a total of 108 votes cast, "Eat Me, You Fool" was the clear winner with 53 votes. "Vitamins Anyone?" received 8 votes and "I Can't Decide" clocked 1 lonely vote which left "Linda Rocks!" and "Dispatch Goddess" tied at 25 votes apiece. Good grief ... this just gets more and more difficult as time goes on!

Not wanting to be the one to cast the tie-breaker vote (after all, I was the one who couldn't make up her mind in the first place!), I have decided to do one more round of polling which ends today at 5:00 p.m. PST. Hopefully there will be a clear-cut winner from this poll and I can finally get my choices sent off to Bob before he gives all of my M&Ms away*.

So, here we go again! {{Sigh}} I can't help but think that this would have been so much easier if I could have just made up my own mind!!

*This comment was left in response to my post on Wednesday guaranteeing Bob would give you your money back if you didn't have a good laugh or two when visiting his blog: "bobbarama said ..."Can't wait to hear what you've selected for your personalized M&Ms. Oh, hey, don't be putting out rumors I'm giving refunds to unhappy visitors. I think you misunderstood. What I'm doing is sending any unhappy readers handfuls of your M&Ms to appease them. You'd either better hope everyone's happy or get your order in quickly before you wind up with just a few of those puppies."

Another Sticky Post & Your Chance to Vote (Scroll Down for New Stuff!)

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Now that I have more or less recovered from my last episode of As the Back Aches, I figure it's about time to make a final decision about those personalized M&Ms that I won a very, very long time ago and still haven't done anything about! Thankfully Bob, from the side-splitting humor blog aptly named bobbarama, has been very understanding about my hesitancy to just throw any old thing on a prize of this magnitude and has been quite patient with me.

Awhile back I asked you the readers of this blog to throw out some suggestions as to what I should put on the M&Ms and from those I have taken what I think are the five best and put them in a poll below. Because I can get two different sayings on my M&Ms, I will take the top two vote-getters and send them off to Bob who waits patiently in California for me to make up my mind.

So once again, gentle readers, I toss it out to you to help with this most monumental of decisions and I am sure that you will help me to make the right decision! I will close the poll on Thursday of this week thereby giving everyone a chance to vote - repeatedly - for their favorite phrases!



Author's Note: A big thank you to Bob for having a classy poll-widget over on his site that I could get the link to as I was having a heck of a time finding one I liked!

Gummis and flowers and votes - oh my!

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A couple of totally unrelated things for today's post ..

Remember awhile back when I told everyone about The Pisstakers blog? I mentioned that if you went over there and were one of the ten bloggers listed in the MyBlogLog community come Sunday morning when Ed logged on, you could win a mini-review for all the Blogosphere to see. I also mentioned that if you clicked on the link that I left for The Pisstakers that I might actually be able to win a pound of gummi bears if I were the top link-sender for the week. This ring a bell with anyone?

Well as it turned out, I didn't manage to send enough folks over to win the gummi bears after that post though I gave it a mighty try. Perhaps it's because some of you were a bit offended by the very name of the blog because you weren't familiar with British slang and didn't know that, across the pond, "taking the piss" means "making fun of" and not what you thought it might mean! I probably should have had my British blog-mate Claire at A Little Piece of Me set you all straight prior to that post!

Whatever the reason for my loss, the winner was Polli of Polliwog's Pond who had also won the gummi bears the previous week. I am sure that it was a much-deserved win and I didn't feel shortchanged at all but shortly after that, much to my surprise, I got an email from Ed telling me that Polli had very generously awarded her gummi bears to me! What a gal!! I guess Polli had had enough of her own cavities being pulled out by the little chewy fruit-flavored bears and felt that my dentist was in need of a little extra business!

Having gotten basically zippity-doo-da in the mail the past few days imagine my delight to come home today and find a pound of gummi bears waiting for me! I tell you, I could really get used to getting blogging prizes delivered to my doorstep! Thanks again to Polli and to Ed of The Pisstakers! Now go over there and take a look around - it's a great blog with some great stuff despite the slightly odd name!


Now, on a completely unrelated topic ... we were treated to some absolutely, positively, glorious Spring days recently and at long last the flowers in my yard decided to make an appearance! I wanted to share some pictures of those along with a couple pictures of the beautiful hanging basket of petunias that was given to me for National Telecommunicators Week. What makes them even nicer is that purple is my favorite color!

And on a final note, tomorrow is the last day of voting for the two phrases that will go on my personalized M&Ms from bobbarama. One phrase is leading the pack by a sizable margin but second place is neck-and-neck in the voting so go on up to the Sticky Post and make sure I get the two best phrases possible for this once-in-a-lifetime prize! Well, it is to me anyway ... And when you're done voting, go on over to Bob's page and have yourself a good laugh or two - guaranteed or Bob will give you your money back (right, Bob? Bob? uh, Bob?)

Thanks & Help! ~ A Sticky Post ~ Scroll Down For New Posts!

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In honor of National Telecommunicators Week, I am going to leave this post at the top for the week just to show my appreciation and support for all of my fellow 911 call-takers and dispatchers out there. I am honored to be one of you!

I thank all of the visitors to my blog who have left comments and expressed thanks to me for my job as an Emergency Medical Dispatcher; I appreciate the kind words and encouragement! And I also want to thank all of my fellow bloggers who "paid it forward" and posted a message on their blogs about NTW. Thank you all so much!!

And now a request for help:


As mentioned in a previous post, I won a contest over at Bobbarama recently where the prize is my very own personalized M&Ms. I get to choose two colors and each candy can have two lines with up to eight characters per line. For the past few days, I have been wracking my brain as to what to put on the M&Ms as I believe this to be a once-in-a-lifetime prize and I don't want to end up with something totally lame.

To that end, I am asking you, my readers, for possible suggestions as to what to put on my M&Ms. And I might as well tell you right up front before your minds fall into the gutter that one of the rules states:

"1. Keep your messages fun and positive; refrain from using objectionable words and phrases. No obscenities ... we don't want to leave a bad taste in anyone's mouth."

Also forbidden are business names, product names, celebrity names, specific sports teams, major events, landmarks, or names of schools or institutions.

So - how about it folks? Any good ideas or suggestions? I need to give Bob an answer some time soon or the guy is going to think I don't want the M&Ms - which couldn't be further from the truth! But, by the same token, I don't want to take a special prize and make it ordinary.

So let's hear it from my regular commenters and you lurkers, too (and yes, you know who you are!) I will be anxiously awaiting your suggestions - and remember - be nice!

Bits & Pieces

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Ah, it's Wednesday again - that day smack in the middle of the week when most people start thinking about, and looking forward, to the weekend. And this weekend is a holiday so the vast majority of people not only get the usual Saturday & Sunday off but also get Friday off, too.

Well, as someone who always strives to be different, I don't fall in with the vast majority of people and will not only be working my usual day shift on Sunday but have also picked up an extra shift on Friday evening. Holiday weekends don't mean much when you're in a 24/7, 365 a day year job as just because it's Easter doesn't mean 911 won't ring. With any luck, someone will bring me a chocolate bunny or some Cadbury mini-eggs and then I won't mind working at all!

Speaking of chocolate, I have been doing the happy dance since last night when I found out that I had managed to win the contest that Bobbarama was having over at his blog. A couple posts back, Bob had announced that he was getting very close to his 500th comment and would award the lucky reader who managed to post comment #500 with personalized M&Ms. Never one to turn away from a challenge (or anything related to chocolate!), I took up the challenge and began leaving even more comments than usual.

This is really easy to do as Bob has some terrificly funny stuff over at his blog like his Dictiowary, an off-the-wall mixture of mangled words with some hilarious new definitions; Time-Sucks, a collection of links that will take you to some very funny spots on the Web; and the Humor Carnival, a monthly feature which is guaranteed to elicit at least one or two chuckles unless there's something seriously wrong with you! One of the funniest things at Bobbarama are the comments that he leaves to your comments which makes return trips more than worthwhile. Suffice it to say I loved this blog even before I became a winner!

Of course, now that I've won I have a dilemma in choosing what to put on my M&Ms. Per the instructions I got from Bob, I can choose one message (up to two lines with a maximum of eight characters on each line) on two different colors of M&Ms or two messages on two different colors. Oh dear ... what to choose? What to choose? This is probably a prize that is going to only come along once in a lifetime so I want to make sure I choose carefully but I just don't know! I'm going to have to mull this one over for awhile ...

In addition to winning the goodies over at Bobbarama, I also got a new badge to put on my blog from Sarge Charlie who had named me a Great American back in March. I was one of the first , if not the very first, recipient of this honor and at that time I was awarded a lovely waving flag from the Sarge which I have been sporting on my sidebar down below Claire's smiling face. Since my naming, Sarge Charlie has refined his technique with his Great American awards and has been doing some very lovely slideshows for the awardees. I mentioned this to him in a post (trying very much to not sound like I was whining!) and Sarge immediately went to work on a slideshow for me which I now unveil for you here:


Thank you, Sarge Charlie, not only for the great award but for being a truly Great American yourself who has no hesitation in letting people know that you truly love your country and what it stands for. I salute you not only for your years of service in the U.S. Army but also for your tireless dedication to the troops and our flag.

And finally, not to leave Amanda out of the news ... I had the pleasure of attending the 2007 Spring Concert for Jazz Band, Orchestra and Concert Band at Norwich Free Academy last night and was treated to some great musical selections. As well as being a talented artist, Amanda plays flute in Concert Band 1 and last night was the second concert of her freshman year. Despite her protestation that there were too many key and tempo changes in Gershwin's "An American in Paris", the band did a fantastic job on not only that piece but four other selections.

Bernstein's "Overture to Candide" was performed by the members of Concert Band 2; this was a piece that Mr. Mac, the band director, had played with his college band but the high schoolers on the stage last night did a remarkable job performing it. Being a sentimental sap I managed to get all teary-eyed during the band's performance of "Shenandoah" and when the show ended with a rousing rendition of John Philip Sousa's "The White Rose" I was ready to stand up and cheer though I managed to restrain myself and not embarrass my poor daughter!


Amanda's next concert will be next Tuesday but, because it's going to be a combination of the local middle school bands and the NFA band, I think I may be passing on that show as the halls of Slater Auditorium, circa 1884, are going to be way too packed for my liking. I have this thing about crowds ... I don't like them! But I'm sure she'll do very well and she can tell me all about it afterwards.

That pretty much wraps up the doings for the first part of the first week of April - which, I must say, has truly been lousy when it comes to the weather as it's been rainy, cold, and blustery; weather more suited to March than the week before Easter. I'm still waiting for Spring to arrive - I'll let you know when it does!