The One Lovely Blog Award

A week or so ago I was honored by with the above blog award.  I’ve kind of shied away from blog awards lately, but seeing as this was bestowed upon me by Julie Dao, one of my closest blogging friends (and just plain friend), I’m making an exception to my self-imposed boycott and posting this.  Here’s how it’s supposed to work -

Rules:

1.      Share 7 Lovely Facts about myself

2.     Link to 15 blogs (or as many as possible) that I enjoy reading

3.     Nominate the authors of those 15 blogs to participate and do the same, linking back to the original Lovely blog. (That would be this page.)

Now, even when I was doing awards I was notorious for not following the rules, and this time will be no different.  I’ll drop my pants and assume the position – sharing seven painful facts about myself that no doubt will inspire some sort of ridicule (and even worse – pity), but I’ll not be passing along the award (even though there are a long list of lovely blogs out there). I do that because I don’t want to saddle someone with an obligation that could spawn guilty feelings (for not having the time to follow through) because of my nomination.

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned some of these before on my blog, but there are only so many facts about an individual truly worthy of putting in print. :)

1.       

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1.    I have no sense of smell.  Never have.  Growing up as a young kid I first thought I couldn’t smell anything because I was doing it wrong, so I went along with what everybody else commenting on (“Smell that…mom’s making Lasagna.” “Yeah…my favorite.”).  My pretending not to be olfactory challenged ended when I was a college freshman and I went on a blind date with a girl that ended badly. The two of us were driving in my car from the restaurant to the movie theater when I did what any normal “smelling” American boy would do – I complimented her on her perfume, even though I had no idea what it smelled like.  She suddenly turned very serious and asked to be immediately taken home.  I didn’t find out what happened until the next day, from my friend whose girlfriend set us up. Apparently the food at the Mexican Café where we ate had given her a bad case of gas and just before I complimented my date on her “perfume”, she had just napalmed the inside of the car.

2.    I became a certified Scuba Diver when I was 17. My dad was a military officer and had connections on the base we were stationed at (Cherry Point, NC), so my brother and I went through a hard core class with a bunch of Marines.  In order to graduate you had to hold all of your gear (mask, fins, tank, weight belt, etc.) in your arms and jump off a 10 foot diving board, sink to the bottom of the pool, put on all of your gear before surfacing.  I passed.  There were a couple of Marines who didn’t.  I only went Scuba Diving one other time after obtained my license.

3.    In high school, our football coach required the team to do track in the off-season, so I ran the 2-mile run and did high jump.  One of my best friends ran the 2-mile also and he lapped me regularly.  I did manage to clear 5’6” in the high jump though and came in 3^rd at one meet.  The surprising part…I was 5’6” tall.

4.    I’ve only had three full-time jobs (the first one lasted less than a year) and been married to my best friend for 31 years.  If you were looking for one word to describe me…you could say “He STICKS.”

5.    I've only read one book more than once (other than my own), and that was the first book I ever read.  That book was...Bambi. 

6.    My first major (of many) in college was Journalism. When I found out how much money most journalism professions make...especially early-on...I bolted.   I don't regret my decision, but I do wish I stuck it out for a little while longer.

7.    This blog used to be entitled Cruising Altitude...which is a case of life imitating art.  Cruising Altitude was the name of the popular blog the main character from my first book wrote...and I wrote that first book BEFORE I started writing this blog.  When I started thinking of names for my real-life blog, I thought how cool it would be to name it after the blog in my book.  Okay...that's not really a fact about me...so let's see if we can make it work.  I'm an extreme introvert...evidenced by the fact that I didn't have my first date until I was in college.  That date came on a spring break trip to Florida.  The trip was so memorable that 33 years later I wrote a short story about it.  That short story ended up being the basis of a novel.  My first novel. The one where the main character wrote a popular blog. Cha-ching! :)

 

S  So...which of my seven facts interests you the most?