The Honest Scrap Award

GrafixMuse bestowed the Honest Scrap Award to me the other day. Thanks!

Here are the Guidelines of The Honest Scrap Award:
1. Brag about the award.
2. Include the name of the blogger who bestowed the award on me and link back to the blogger.
3. Choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that I find brilliant in content or design.
4. Show their names and links and leave a comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog.
5. List at least ten (10) honest things about myself.

I'm going to list my ten things first. Usually I find a lot in common with other bloggers. At least half the things they say about themselves fit with me, sometimes all of them, but when GrafixMuse listed hers, I had to say, "That's not me at all." So I'm going to take her list and make it mine.

1) She is number challenged. I come from a line of number nerds and proudly follow in their tradition. My mother was a human calculator. I had one math teacher that told me I didn't even have to show up to class, I just had to take the tests. He loved giving me unsolvable math problems to see if I could do them. My son taught himself calculus while he was taking the precalc course in high school. He took the BC Calc AP test that year and got a 5. He ended up with five college level math courses under his belt before he hit college. My daughter wants to go into quantum gravity and thinks quantum mechanics is easy. Even I don't think that. When I tell her I don't get it she tells me, "It's just math mom." BTW I aced quantum in college but I still don't get it. We are a family of number nerds and are proud of it.

2) She can't buy anything over $100 dollars without researching it to death. I rarely spend much, but if I want something I can send it without batting an eyelash. I will research something to death to make sure I get the right one if I'm not sure. But I'll do that with any sized thing. I hate buying something I won't use in the future.

3) She says as she has matured she likes quiet nights at home more than nights out. I'm half there. I love quite nights at home, but I still love my parties. The reason is that I love to socialize. I also love going out to eat with my family. I have a family of introverts and they are forced to talk to me then. My husband and I have recently started going to the Boston Seminar Series (nerdy talks at MIT) and MIT's science breakfasts. I love that. I can socialize and be nerdy all at the same time.

4) She is a workaholic. I'm so not. I do get obsessed with projects at times, but I'm really happy doing nothing too. Work does not consume me.

5) She has naturally hard nails. I so don't. They break all the time. I never polish them, but leave them natural.

6) Her hair began to turn gray at 18. I'm 47 and I have one gray hair. My mom wasn't really gray until 60. I think I'm following in her footsteps.

7) She hates driving in the snow. I hate driving, but the snow doesn't bother me. I didn't get my license until I was 23. Cars are just death traps waiting to happen. I don't understand the American love for the car.

8) She says she is a trustworthy person. I am too. She says she is non judgemental. So am I. I don't understand the propensity for people to lie. I once read a study that said most people lie everyday. Really? Do people do it just for fun? I can think of four reasons to lie. 1) to make people like you better 2) to keep from getting in trouble 3) to get something you want 4) to keep from hurting someone. So I guess I just don't have a lot of reason to lie. 1) If someone doesn't like me for who I am, then I don't need them around. 2) People ought to take responsibility for themselves. 3) I hardly need to lie to get what I want. If I want something I ask for it. People are usually good about giving it. 4) On very rare occasion I'll lie for this reason, but rarely. Even here I'll tend to be honest. If I liked your hair better the other way, I'll tell you. Sorry. But I won't tell you unless you ask. I will try to be tactful about how I say it, but I won't lie about it if you are a friend. I will lie about it to people I don't know. My friends know I'm saying things with love. Strangers don't. I also don't know strangers and don't have their life story. So I can't really say if it is good or not.

9) She can have trouble pronouncing words. I can pronounce words just fine. Well unless I'm really cold then I tend to slur my words. It is spelling that I can't do. Without spell check I'd be lost. Plus I type pretty quickly and flip letters occasionally. I am however what my husband used to term a mule. A decade ago he used to be the lead engineer on Dragon Naturally Speaking (speech recognition software). Mules are people that the system can't recognize. It gets trained to your individual voice. We are inconsistent speakers so it never gets trained.

10) She always wears heels because she is short. I've worn heals once in the last year (and only for five minutes). For my wedding I wore flats so I wouldn't be taller than my husband in the photos. The last time I wore heals consistently was when a bunch of friends and I took ballroom dancing together. Since we did this for over a year, I got some nice dancing shoes with suede on the bottom. For dancing I'll wear heals if I have to, but not for many other things. I'll blame my lack of fashion for growing up in the Colorado mountains. We walked to parties in our hiking boots and skirts. I just could never get into shoe fashion. I have a total of three pairs of heels. One black pair, one off white pair and my dancing shoes. I have more working/exercise shoes in my closet than pretty shoes.

I should just copy her list of people though. I'm alike with her on that. She picked all people I would have picked. Now I have to go figure out who I've given awards to already so I don't get duplicates.

OK back. I've given awards already to the following people:

Michelle at From Seed To Table
Kate at Gardening Without Skills
kitsapFG at The Modern Victory Garden
June at Four Green Acres
Sally at My Dirt
Amanda at Cooking in someone else's kitchen
Miss M at The Informal Gardener
Annie's Granny from Annie's Kitchen Garden
Dan from Urban Veggie Garden Blog
EG from Our Engineered Garden
Frances from Fairegarden
Our Friend Ben from Poor Richard's Almanac
Cindy at Brambleberries in the Rain
Shibaguyz
Ali at Henbogle
Kate at The Manic Gardener
Green Bean Dreams
A Sonoma Garden
Veg*n Cooking and Other Random Musings
Kathy from "Skippy's Vegetable Garden"
Margo from "Garden Misadventures"
Melissa from "Garden Portraits"
S. Jones from "Compostings"
Mike from "Tiny Farm Blog"
Kate from "The Root"

Wow that's a lot of people (I'd add some link love, but really it is way too much work). I always feel like I should come up with new people and spread the love around. There are just too many fine bloggers out there. So in no particular order:

• The Mom From Heather's Homemaking and I'm so trying her eggrolls with the next Chinese cabbage I pick.
  
• Susy from Chiot's Run
• Toni from Toni's Weedless Square Foot Garden
• Nathan at 2 Acre Farm
• Lou from Lou Murray's Green World Blog
• Selina from Indiana Girl
• Emily from greens and jeans

So now I have to work on letting them all know.