Awards!

One thing I didn’t expect when I started this blog (just a couple months ago) was to have any readers outside my family. I said in my first post that I wasn’t really keeping this private, but I wasn’t advertising it either. But the blogging community, especially the one internal to WordPress.com, is pretty friendly, and once I started following a few other sites they started following me too.

One of those is The Monkey’s Jungle, a site by a homeschooling mother. I don’t know if I’ve got the fortitude to home school my kids, but I love the idea of it, so I started following her, and she followed me back. That’s largely irrelevant, but she graciously passed on a couple of awards to me last week! It’s no Pulitzer, but I’m happy to say that I’m now the proud winner of the Versatile and Creative Blogger Awards.

The gist of these is that you pass them around between bloggers with a list of questions to answer as a way to get to know each other and help build content. I’m not really big on filling out surveys of myself for public consumption, but in the spirit of things here are my responses. I’m going to refrain from passing it on right now, since I’m still figuring my way around the blogosphere, but I’ll keep it in mind for the future.

If you could choose where to live regardless of other commitments, where would you go?

Ideally I’d have a large house (at least compared to my townhouse) with a lot of land. I grew up on the side of a mountain, and loved exploring the woods as a kid, and I’d like to give my kids the same experience. But I’d also like to live close to town (something I didn’t have growing up), and I’d love to be able to use my bike as my primary transportation. Those two goals are largely at odds, but I’m sure eventually we’ll find a compromise somewhere.

Favorite book?

I love anything by Brandon Sanderson. I just finished reading Firefight, the second book in his Reckoners trilogy, and it was fantastic. I’m a huge fan of everything involving super heroes, and that series turns the concept on its head. The story is that one day a bright light appeared in the sky and gave some people random powers. But the twist is that once somebody gets powers they become evil. There are no good heroes. Or are there?

Movie in the theater or at home?

My answer is the same as the one on Monkey’s Jungle – Theater if I can, but I’m happy watching a movie at home with the kids. Mine are still a little young to really sit and enjoy a movie, but we’re slowly getting there.

The rules for this one are a little different…all you need to do are thank the person (Thanks!) and include a link to their blog, which I did up above. Next I’m supposed to pick 15 other blogs to pass this on to, but I’m going to skip that step for now. And finally I’m supposed to say 7 things about myself…which makes this feel like an awkward introduction game at summer camp.

I’m a father of 2 girls
I work for Automattic, the company behind this wonderful blog at WordPress.com
I don’t really need to lose weight, but I’m obsessed with trying different diets and eating healthy. Right now I’m focusing on a ketogenic diet.
I think 7 is a lot of things
I have a Macbook Pro, and I love certain things about it, but it’s getting increasingly frustrating and I plan to dual boot Linux as soon as I get some time to do a full install and config
I built my own Home Theater PC to replace my DVR…but it’s also acting up recently, and I need to do a full reinstall there. I’ll probably blog about that at some point as well.
On my desk I have an autographed picture of Sharon Stone, which I was tricked into buying at a charity auction in 2008.