I’m not usually one to participate in chain letters or “random things about you” memes in social media, but I really like the Liebster Award meme that is going around in blog circles, because it does allow us to learn a little more about people in our community. Zyngor recently got his Liebster nomination from Fredelas, and Zyngor in turn nominated Tomeoric and anybody else that wants to join in the Liebster fun. So I’m going to nominate a handful of blogs at the end of this post – read on to see if you were nominated!

First, 10 Factoids about me:

1. I love animals of all sorts. Growing up our family had 2 dogs, a cat, hamsters, and a rabbit, but I was always catching other critters in the woods behind our house: turtles, snakes, bugs, etc. The snakes were always fun, my mother wouldn’t let them in the house for obvious reasons. The biggest one that I ever handled was a black snake about 2 inches in diameter and 7 feet long. I was 9.
2. However, I’m deathly afraid of spiders. I will not touch a spider ever. Ever. I prefer to use blowtorches on them if at all possible. Or 2x4s. 😉
3. I was homeschooled for 12 years. The first day that I ever stepped foot in an actual classroom was my first day of college.
4. When I was 5 I won a bubble-gum blowing contest on-stage with Dolly Parton at Dollywood in East Tennessee. 15 years later I met Dolly Parton again while interning at Dollywood’s business office. She was a doll – she’s exactly as she comes across in the media. I still love blowing the biggest bubbles possible and popping them loud enough to rattle my brain.
5. The scariest movie I remember was Return to Oz. That was a freaky movie for a little kid. Seriously. A witch that can change heads and those crazy wheelers? I had nightmares for weeks. I love watching it for nostalgia purposes now.
6. Hidden Talents: Sewing, knitting, crocheting, embroidery, floral design. My first job was at a fabric/craft store. I learned how to do pretty much everything and taught classes. My current retirement plan is to go back to teaching classes again.
7. I first learned to game when I was 3 and my aunt taught me how to play Pole Position on the Atari 2600 with a joystick. There are a LOT of girl gamers in our family, starting with my aunt and on to myself and several of my cousins. We’re already teaching the next generation of girls. 😉
8. I play the fiddle (badly) and the piano (badly). I tried to learn percussion for a while as well, at this point I’m pretty sure that I have zero instrumental talent.
9. But I can sing. My voice is a deep alto with a “blue-eyed soul” flair, like Adele or Joss Stone. Throw on some old-school bluesy or jazzy soul music and I can rock it. I’m painfully shy though, so I only ever sing to myself. Such is life.
10. I’m too sweet and nice and people tend to take advantage of that. I also have a wicked and sarcastic sense of humor that I usually keep a lid on. It always surprises people when I let it out because they have no idea that I think that way.

Now on to the questions that Zyngor posed!

1. Tell us a game (computer, console, board, outdoor) that almost always makes you happy while playing, regardless of outcome.

Animal Crossing. I’ve played each one since the original came out for the Nintendo Game Cube years ago. The gameplay isn’t super-deep, but it’s incredibly happy and the music is sooo relaxing. It always makes me happy to see all the little townsfolk trading shirts, catching bugs, and fishing.

2) If you had one choice of food to solely eat for the rest of your life, regardless of normal dietary needs, what would it be?

Good homemade lasagna. It’s my favorite thing ever.

3) Which piece of gaming equipment started off your hobby?

Technically my aunt’s Atari, but I think it’s also worth mentioning that about a year or so later, my parents bought a Commodore 64. We played games on that and I even started doing some rudimentary programming on that old system. Then another year or two later, we got an NES and that was my first “real” gaming system.

4) What is your favorite soda? Or, other drink?

For soda, I like a 50/50 mix of Coke and Diet Coke. My favorite drink though is a Starbucks Raspberry Mocha Frappucino.

5) If you were to travel across country, would you prefer to go by plane, train, or automobile? Steve Martin or John Candy?

I’d be open to any of the above, but train would be awesome. You’d get to see some of the country while relaxing the whole way. Steve Martin is funnier as far as stand up goes, but I bet John Candy would provide better conversation, so John Candy.

6) Right or left Twix?

Right. Always right.

7) Name a strength of yours that helps define your online persona.

Probably the aforementioned niceness with the wicked sense of humor. I’m typically looser with my thoughts (and tongue) on Twitter than I am in real life, so I guess who I am online is closer than the “real life” me, oddly enough.

8) Which two combined gaming genres strikes your fancy the most? Ie Action & RPG, FPS & Strategy… go wild.

Sandbox Survival and MMO. Now wait, I know you’re thinking that Sandbox Survival MMOs exist. And they do to an extent, but what I’m thinking of has only ever come to actual fruition in Wurm Online. A massively multiplayer persistent world where players get to stake their claim on an area and have to build/create everything needed to survive, but with far more depth than Minecraft. It’s a combo that doesn’t currently have a lot of options – either theoverly simplistic Minecraft or the overly punishing Wurm Online. I’d like something in the middle.
9) Do you even ranch, bro?

Ranch dressing? Sure. I guess?
10) If your life were a meme, what would the tagline read?

“Just be you. Everybody else is taken.”

11) Which movie character/hero would you like to be, and why?

Oh man… definitely Dylan Sanders from the 2000 movie Charlie’s Angels. This is why:

Now as for my nominations, I nominate Aywren, Gryph, Ysharros, and YOU! If you haven’t been specifically nominated but want to participate, absolutely go for it! My questions to you are:

1. What was the last movie you went to? What did you think?
2. What would you change about yourself if you could?
3. What would you sing at Karaoke night?
4. Who is your favorite author?
5. List two pet peeves.
6. What’s the most daring thing you’ve ever done?
7. What three items would you take with you on a deserted island?
8. What song would you say best sums you up?
9. Are you an introvert or an extrovert?
10. What is the best gift you have been given?

Since we’re in Blaugust, lets talk about blogs. I don’t know about you guys, but I am never really satisfied with my blog layout. I don’t know why, but I see awesome looking blogs like Mama Needs Mana or Tales of the Aggronaut and mine just seems like fail. I don’t think it really is fail, but I suppose that’s a little bit of the perfectionist side of me. In the past I’ve tried both Blogger and WordPress, and I LOVE WordPress. I had a WordPress blog set up at Battlepriestess.com a long time ago, but funds grew short so I ended up canceling that domain/site and moved over to the free WordPress.com instead.

I really like WordPress.com – if you’re on a budget it is great as far as having a lot of good free themes and some basic customization. For a fee, you can upgrade WordPress.com to give you unlimited storage and amazing customization. Last year I paid $30 to get CSS/HTML customization, which worked great and is budget-friendly. However when I went back over the weekend to update/renew that, I found that the $30 option is no longer there. It’s all been rolled into the $99/year premium package with a bunch of other frills that I don’t really need.

So now I’m shopping around. It turns out that I can get a hosted WordPress.ORG setup, with whatever theme, customization, and storage I want, for around $3.99-$4.99/month, which is still cheaper than $99/year, and includes a free domain that I can hold on to. Given the competition, I’m not sure who the WordPress.com premium package is marketed to. You still can’t use your own themes or Google Analytics, so perhaps it’s for people who want more options but are ingrained at their WordPress.com blog address.

I’ve decided that if I can hold out for all 31 days of Blaugust, my reward to myself will be a splurge on a site with a WordPress.org setup. I’ll probably end up spending about $100 by the time I get a nice theme and all that, but at least I’ll be back on my own domain and not under the thumb of WordPress.com. What say you guys? If you have a blog, what host do you use and would you recommend them to others?

In case you didn’t know, today is the first day of Blagust Blaagust BLAUGUST. Belghast started this event last year as a way of getting bloggers into the habit of making one post a day every day during the month of August. I didn’t participate last year but I’m going to give it a shot this year. There’s two reasons for this:

• To learn to spell Blaugust. Seriously, I’m an excellent speller 99% of the time, but I can’t ever type Blaugust correctly the first time. B-L-A-U-G-U-S-T.
• To try to get back into swing of blogging. I love blogging, and I love writing. What I am not good at is time management, so inevitably blogging gets pushed to the backburner. I miss it though, and I love reading other blogs for inspiration, so I’m going to give it my best shot. If I don’t hit all 31 days, I’m not going to beat myself up over it. If I hit half of that it’ll be far more than what I was doing before.

I’m currently on vacation which means that I’m running to and fro doing fun non-computery things, so I have a couple of posts queued up until I get back. These are old roleplay stories that I wrote a while back, so they aren’t your typical blog posts. I may try to write at least 2-3 more during Blaugust to stretch my fiction muscles a bit, and write about the activity of roleplay in MMORPGs as well, in addition to WoW expansion speculation, what I’m doing in-game, and general MMO commentary.

Here’s to my fellow Blaugustionians – may you all be verbose and prolific this month! ❤