Sunday, November 8, 2009

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:

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

11 comments:

  1. Thanks for the award. Very interesting to read your answers to the 10 things.

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  2. Thanks so much for the award. We are very similar. Interesting.

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  3. I loved this post, Daphne! SO entertaining!!! I could relate on so many fronts, with some twists: No nailpolish (but nails strong enough to pierce steel); flat soft shoes unless trying to show off (and at 5'5", certainly not trying to show off my height!); never telling lies (integrity aside, way, waaaayyy too much work to try to keep track). Thanks for a great post for a Sunday morning!---Silence

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  4. Daphne, I couldn't agree with you more about lying ! What a terrible habit. Everybody does it ! ('cept you and me ;)). I think most of them don't even realize they do it. If ppl only knew how liberating it was to tell the truth ! The world would truly be a better place.

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  5. Chiot's Run, you're welcome. I always love finding out more about the people behind the blogs. So I try to participate. I'm guessing I repeat myself occasionally so this time I used GrafixMuse's answers to do something different.

    The Mom, that is what I usually say when I read people's memes. It is funny how this time I was so different.

    Silence, it is true. How do people keep their lies straight? And if you do it to make people like you more or to make them feel better, when they find out you lied to them it does exactly the opposite. I've found people to be very forgiving about things when you are honest.

    miss m, I agree with you. Telling the truth is much more liberating.

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  6. Hi, Daphne. Been following you for a few months but haven't commented before. Learning a lot of great things about veggie gardening from you as I consider raised beds next year. Thanks.

    Anyway, we all suspected that you were a math whiz, but we KNEW you weren't a liar. You won't even count a squash in your tally until you've proven it's edible. LOL

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  7. What an interesting post, and you've certainly impressed me on the maths front!

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  8. You were not kidding when you said you and I were very different. What an interesting approach to providing the 10 honest things about yourself.

    I envy the intelligence you and your family share when it comes to mathematical ability. I mourn my lack of this ability as I believe mathematics is the language of our world and everything around us. You have the gift to see life differently than most of us.

    I too have no understanding as to why some people feel the need to lie. I have a coworker who does it all the time…really stupid lies too. I cannot figure out what he thinks he will gain from not being truthful. When asked for an opinion, I too am usually brutally honest. I try to soften it as much as I can, but my friends expect it of me.

    I loved learning more about you. Thanks for playing along.

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  9. sorrygardener, raised beds are wonderful especially if you have clay soil (like I do), live in a cool climate (like I do), or get a lot of rain (like I do).

    Jan, we have our weaknesses too, but just not in math

    GrafixMuse, I've written a couple of these kinds of posts before, so I figured I wouldn't repeat myself so much if I just used yours. It was fun to compare and contrast. I don't really see the world differently. I think as an artist (I went to art school after deciding I didn't want to be a chemist), I often see it differently, but my daughter I think is the one that really sees the world differently. I still use my senses to see the world and process it (its why I still have trouble wrapping my brain around quantum even if I could do the math at one time). My daughter lives in her mind (she is an autistic spectrum kid and as such has trouble processing her senses well, which is why I think she lives in her mind more than the rest of us do). Math is a much easier language for her than English is. She is really looking for the truth in the world and how it is put together. Her college made her do an humanities project so she did one on philosophy, which is just another way of looking for the truth. I'm so much more of a experiential/sensory person. I like to just experience the world, not find its deeper meaning. It is probably why I'm not a workaholic.

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  10. Daphne,

    Thanks for the award. I think I'm going to forgo passing it on since I'm struggling to even find time to do the regular blogging right now. However, I enjoyed learning more about you and I appreciate you thinking of me.

    Emily

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  11. Emily, Not a problem. Whenever I do these things, I usually only get a few to pass it along. I think that is why they all tell you to pick so many. Otherwise it would die out to quickly.

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