M.J Made My Day! Inspiring Blogger Award

As most of you regular readers know, it's not exactly been easy around here medically lately, but I just got a special treat which has made my week not quite so horrid. Made me feel content, in fact. It's just that the rules (which I don't mind) and my quest for brevity (which is a flippin' necessity) require me to shorten this acceptance speech, and the number of new recipients I pass this on to.  I know some horrid chain letter thing will happen, but after the pitchfork incident, I'm not too worried.  Bring it ON!

M.J Joachim (who is on staff with the A-Z Challenge, working for Nicole) just gave me this award.

Here are the rules for my acceptance of this award:

• Display the award logo on your blog post. (check)
• Link back to the person who nominated you. (check)
• State 7 things about yourself. (1/2 check)
• Nominate 15 bloggers to the award. (1/2 check)
• Notify bloggers of nomination by linking to one of their specific posts, so that they get notified by ping back . (½ check, since I'm nominating 7 not 15 of them)

Some Things About Me...

This is going to be harder than I thought because that tab up there has a lot, and I just wrote my “getting to know your co-hosts”post at The A-Z Blog

But I'm a weird one, so here are still some things I don't think you know about me.

• I've had 15 surgeries. When I go to a new doctor and fill out their forms, the line for “list any previous surgeries” is about maybe 6” long. I have a spreadsheet I print out and bring with me. I'm medically challenged, but that part you already knew. If you want to know WHAT all those were, you'll have to become my buddy and pinky swear and we'll have to spit on our palms and everything. Ok, some hints. Most are orthopedic. 5 are related to being able to call The Transporter and Our Youngest Teen my children. A tough road. I've broken four bones, but my right wrist alone required 6 of those surgeries. It adds up.
  
  
• I'm a math nerd AND a word nerd. My degree is in math, but I'm a writer too. I was one class away from a minor in English. I know that's a strange right/left brain combination but it's me. I love a good pun, I love a bad pun, I love any pun.  I love word games, I love learning new words, I love finding out the origin of words. I speak 2.1 languages. I don't think all my years of Spanish count if all I can really remember to say is, “Mi chaqueta es roja”. My jacket is red. And probably spelled wrong. Sigh.
  
  
• I love math games. I love figuring out problems that my friends call me with that their children are struggling to figure out and I can help. It's very satisfying. Just wish my boys found my help with homework useful, but NO. I usually get, “But that's not how Mrs. FavoriteTeacherEver does it. Of course not. That's the ultimate beauty of math. Many paths. ONE correct solution. Sigh. I AM a nerd.
  
  
• I'm working on brevity in posting. Just checked. WAAAY over 500 (my personal goal) words. EEK!

Here are my seven nominations. Gotta give the first one to Jeremy, aka

Retro-Z, my buddy, my blog builder, my friend. Best digital artist I've ever met. Look at my blog. It's ME. He built it from scratch, and of course made the Tina's Terrific Team badge. Which of course I think is the best of all of them...Just click on his name and you'll get an intro to his eclectic blog, and his team of minions, er, administrative assistants.

The next 6 nominations for this award are my Tina's Terrific Team Members! I choose them all because I already chose them. As the person in charge of recruiting helpers, I chose my whole team first. Probably cheating, but hey, it was a big job, and lots of quality folks to choose from. So I did. They are all in the sidebar over there underneath that neato badge, but I'll list their names and blogs here too. They all deserve this award for the hard work they've already completed...and because I know what's ahead for them...And of course they have great blogs.  They are in alphabetical order - stuff like that matters to word nerds.

A. J Lauer of Naturally Sweet (I chose her A-Z team member intro post) She has this awesome new book Armageddon  just released where you choose your own ending.  And die in most of them. 

Andrea of Maybe it's Just Me (I picked a post that I thought just described her personality so well) She also has a blog called I Like it On theTable...I'll let you discover why she likes it. I certainly do...

Hilary Melton-Butcher of Positive Letters...inspirationalStories. I picked one of her posts which just tugged at my heart, and totally also shows you who she is.

Jolie du Pre  of Precious Monsters is a published author and super busy yet still willing to work for free. The post I chose is about on of my favorite forms of exercise, and it made me feel good that even though I'm not in her league in publishing, I do at least know how to work out like she does ;-)

JoJo of Tahoma Beadworks and Photography. I chose her intro to the team post because it has great links for those of you STILL MIGHT NOT know what this A-Z thing is we're all talking about.

Last but certainly not least, my new friend Philip aka PV Ariel who hails from India and blogs in his second language (at times, and at other times in native tongue - but his challenge posts will be in English) at philipscom, and is an amazingly hard worker. I chose a post in his native language because it's just such beautiful script. You won't be able to read it, unless you translate (or know the language...) but you'll know what it's about from the pictures. Please do check it out!   

Thanks again, M.J for making me feel special.

~Tina