Ahhh… My Dearest!

You may be looking at my blog title and thinking, whoa… is this where CrakGenius gets romantic on us all of a sudden?  No.  Does that even SOUND like something I’d do?  No, I’m referring to my dearest award, which my blog has just received.  Literally, that’s the name of the award.  Liebster is German for dearest (or, so Google translate would have me believe… though we’ve all seen the perils of trusting Google or any other translator).  So I am considering this my dearest award… which should be said in a creepy covetous manner like Gollum saying “MY PRECIOUS!”

My Dearest

Karyn over at Notes From the Desk of the Analogy Queen passed this award along to me.  She writes an awesome blog about marriage, family, and the every day humor found in life in general which really makes for a great read.

I’m honored to be given this award.  I truly am.  But, you folks know me by now.  I’m not going to follow the rules.  I’ll follow… SOME of the rules… but not all of them. So, I guess we should start by looking at what the rules are.

The rules for The Liebster Award are as follows:

• Each person must post 11 things about themselves.
• Answer the questions the person giving the award has sent you.
• Create 11 questions for the people you will be giving the award to.
• Choose 11 people to award and send them the link to your post. Go to their page and tell them.
• No tag backs.

Okay, sounds simple enough.  So here’s where I’ll begin derailing this train.

Origin of the Award

Just like with the Head for a Hat Award, I was immediately curious as to the origin of this particular award.  This time, however, I wasn’t lucky enough to trace the award back to it’s origin in a few easy steps, nor was I diligent enough to really dig deep (though, it seems the oldest award winning blogs were written in German… now the German title makes a bit more sense).  It seems that this particular blog award has been around for awhile and has had several different images associated with it over time.  I will say that, in my digging, I noticed a change in the rules over time.  So, I’m totally drawing on the original rules … or rather as close to the original rules as I can determine … because I think this thing’s gotten a little big for its britches over time.

These seem to be the original Liebster Award images.

Original(ish) Rules For The Liebster Award

• You must thank the person who gave you this award.
• You must display the Liebster heart on your blog.
• You should nominate 3 to 5 up-and-coming blogs (with less than 200 subscribers)

That was it.  Simple, straightforward blog recognition, to be given to small, otherwise unknown blogs worthy of notice.  Seeing these original rules, and the rules as they stand now, actually makes me wonder if, five years from now, someone will get the coveted “Head for a Hat” and have to do a scavenger hunt or something.  Anyway, lets get to how I’m going to do this thing.

Rule #1: Each person must tell 11 things about themselves. Uhm.  No.  Sorry.  That goes against the whole purpose of my blog, which is to remain utterly anonymous while slowly revealing pieces of my past through anecdotes.  These appear occasionally on my site and are all categorized under the My Life And Times link at the top.  Feel free to read all about my life there.

Rule #2: Answer the questions the person giving the award has sent you.  Okay.  This I will do, because I think she put some thought into them, and they should be fun to answer.

Rules #3-4: Make up 11 questions for those following you to answer and nominate 11 blogs. No.  Not exactly.  Here’s where I’m going to be lazy as hell get back to the original spirit of the award and only nominate 3-5 blogs with small followings.  Also, I’m going to only come up with 3-5 original questions of my own, and totally plagiarize the rest from Karyn (thanks again Karyn!) and a few from the guy who gave HER the award, Jimmy at Founding a Father.

11 Questions From Karyn

At some point, the Liebster Award looked like this.

1. If you could change 1 thing about yourself, what would it be?  My overwhelming laziness.  Though the lengths I went through just to half-ass this blog are pretty good evidence that I’m not really fixing that particular flaw.
2. Beauty or brains?  Beauty.
3. How did you meet your spouse / significant other? Spouse?  Significant other?  I’m going to just go ahead and read that as “how did you meet your ex, you sad, lonely man?”  I met her on the internet… back in the mid-1990’s when people really didn’t do that sort of thing.  I totally fell for her, and she for me, and neither of us knew what the other looked like (thus proving my answer to #2 to be compete bullshit put there only to momentarily disappoint and upset you).
4. As a friend I am… giving.  Utterly, and to a fault, I’m always the giving one in any friendship or relationship.
5. I love people who… make me laugh or make me think.  One or the other.  Or better yet, both.
6. How much sleep do you need at night to be your best?  I am a horrible insomniac.  I’m writing this blog post, as a matter of fact, at 3:30 am AFTER having attempted to go to bed at a reasonable time, waking up an hour later and realizing there was laundry that needed to be put in, then finding one thing after another to engage my mind until I realized sleep was futile.  I’ll nap tomorrow… or not.  So, in answer to your question, I really don’t know.  I never FEEL at my best… thanks insomnia!
7. What’s your nickname?  Todd.  It’s my middle name, and the story behind WHY I use it is long and probably the subject for a future blog. But only a select group of people who read this blog know my real name (you know who you are).
8. Your secret celebrity crush… if I told you, it would hardly be a secret!  Okay, fine, it’s Zooey Deschanel.
9. Introvert or extrovert?  If I’m being totally honest, introvert in real life, extreme extrovert online.
10. Do you have tattoos?  How many?  If not, would you ever get one?  No… and I probably wouldn’t.  I find that my taste and style change constantly.  I don’t know that I’ll ever get to the point where I’ll know with absolute certainty, “yes, THAT is the image I want permanently attached to my body.”  I have real admiration for those people with really beautiful tattoo work, though.  They are more decisive (or have been more drunk) than I’ll ever be.
11. You arrive at a restaurant. There’s a 35 min wait for a table in the dining room or you can sit in the bar and be served immediately. Which do you choose? If there’s a bar… then why am I wanting a table in the first place?!  Beer me!

11 Questions For Awardees

1. Are you a grammar Nazi?  (Spoiler: if you wanted to tell me that “awardees” isn’t a word… you are)
2. If you had to choose just one, Facebook or Twitter?
3. How long have you been blogging?
4. What’s the worst search term which led someone to your blog?
5. What’s your most popular post and why?
6. If you could have one superpower, what would it be?
7. What’s your favorite curse word and why?
8. What’s your porn star name?  (First name is the name of your first pet, last name is the name of the street you grew up on… so mine was Caligula Mayflower… more like May DEflower… am I right?!  Sorry.  Moving on.)
9. Do you have any tattoos?  If so, how many?  If not, would you ever get one?
10. Introvert or extrovert?
11. How did you meet your spouse / significant other?

There.  That’s 5 from me, 3 recycled from Jimmy, and 3 recycled from Karyn.

And the 3 to 5 Winners Are….

The hard part here, was sticking to what I believe to be the original intent of this blog.  That is, only giving the award to sites with less than 200 followers, to promote relatively unknown blogs.  So, that left me with the grand question… how do you know how many followers a blog has?  I went by comments.  I figure probably around 1 in 20 people will comment on a blog. So if you have a blog which seems to average 4 comments per post, you probably have about 80 people reading that post.  What am I basing this 1 in 20 thing on?  Absolutely nothing but blind guesswork.  At least it made me FEEL like I had a formula… so just go with it.

Also, I’m trying to stick to blogs that I haven’t already given an award to.  Nothing against you guys, but I wanted to reward different bloggers.  Also… I’m sure you went well over 200 followers when I gave you those past awards, since I have so many followers!  Hahahahaha!  *Sigh* Humor me.  Anyway… the winners are:

Barnes Daily Circus – Natalie was the VERY FIRST PERSON to comment on my blog ever!  And, despite my occasional rambling road, she still reads what I write today.  You gotta love that.  You also gotta love a blog as beautifully written and honest as hers.

Inelegant Unpremeditated Life – Okay, yeah.  She’s already been given one of these, so she doesn’t have to do the post.  But I met her on Twitter and love her blog, her twitter ramblings, and her burlesque pictures.  Wait.  Did I say the last part out loud?

it’s so FUZZY! – I recently met the author on Twitter, but I’ve been reading her blog since before that happened.  It’s a funny blog, and Jaime’s a funny chick.  Also, for some reason, I can’t look at her blog title without thinking of this.

Merrily Mary – I only recently met Mary on Twitter at a #wineparty which somehow segued into a #penisparty.  Don’t judge me.  Also, feel free to join me on Twitter on Friday nights for #wineparty followed by the ultimate after-party… #penisparty.  But, back to the whole point of all this, I looked at her blog out of curiosity and only needed to read 2 posts to decide I loved this blog.  Also, her microwave looks almost as bad as mine, so there’s that.

Jeneral Insanity – This is definitely the new kid on the block… err… blog… blog block?  Anyway, they’ve only been blogging since August, but seem to have a grasp on what makes a great blog: zombies and crude drawings.  Word.

So that’s it.  Go forth and multiply, my liebsters!  I meant… give the award to other people… not, you know, make babies.  I’m not telling you to NOT make babies.  I… uh… wow this went in an uncomfortable direction…