OUR LIFE IN 3D

It happened one dark and stormy night (part II)

It happened one dark and stormy night. Everything was still. There was an eerie silence throughout the house. Rain hit the glass like a mad man tapping on the panes. The only light visible was that emitted from the computer screen. There was this one hip lady, and a coupla of her band kids. Her hair looked like a James Bond heroine. Her smile said there was more to the book than the glossy cover. She was completely unaware I was reading her! And then it happened.

There, at the bottom of her page I saw it. It was my name. She had actually found me. Me! My blog! Someone actually noticed! And this hip lady decided to tell everyone about herself and then about me….and all the others.

I clenched my shoulders from the naked feeling I was getting. I felt defenseless. Everyone had to have seen this by now; or will see this…..and what she had given me; what we shared.  It wouldn’t be a secret any longer. And few people will understand. Everyone now will know about (sigh)…..my Liebster Award.

My friend and fellow fellow blogger, Laura Lamere surprised and honored me with a Liebster Award. Laura writes Parenting Creative Kids, a great blog about managing, encouraging, and supporting her teenagers as they explore their creative sides in bands and other activities. She literally built a great resource for parents that wish to support their kids in the arts.

In receiving the award Laura notes that the Liebster Award is usually given to up-and-coming bloggers who have less than 200 followers and that “liebster” is a German word meaning “dearest”. There has to be a mistake here….

Well, I don’t feel like an up and comer. I just finished my first year. More like a down and treading water(er). I don’t have the time to promote a blog, write something interesting everyday, nor make any money off this stuff. So this is as good as its gonna get. That’s why I really appreciate Laura choosing my blog for this great award. I am honored, humbled (she writes so much better than me), and very, very appreciative. Dang, she makes at least 6 people now that might enjoy this blog!

To accept the award, I must follow these rules:

1. Post 10 things about myself;
2. Answer the 10 questions the person giving the award has set;
3. Create 10 questions for the people I have chosen to receive the award;
4. Choose  people to award, send them a link to my post, and go to their page and tell them;

Answers from Laura’s blog for the Award nominees:   

What is your most cherished possession?
I think you know the answer to this. They are my kids. They completely scramble your list of priorities and what’s really  important. You are probably getting tired of hearing this, aren’t you?

    What song(s) would you choose as the soundtrack to your life?

Rush ~ Working Man    

 Billy Currington~  People Are Crazy
ELO’s ~ Hold On Tight (To Your Dreams)
Jimmy Buffett’s ~  One Tin Chalice
Jimmy Buffett’s ~ We Are The People Our Parents Warned Us About
Jimmy Buffett’s ~ Chansons Pour le Petites Enfants

    At what moment did you realize you weren’t a kid anymore?

I am still a kid, much to the frustration of my spouse! I actually received some AARP spam mail last year when I turned 50. What a bubble burster! That added a lot of weight to my wife’s argument.

    Which of Shakespeare’s plays is your favorite and why?
This is embarrassing, and please don’t take away my blog card, but I don’t know any Shakespeare. I think I may have read Shakespeare in way back in college. I would say the Iliad and the Odyssey, since the movie “O Brother Where Art Thou” is based off of it? That’s one of my favorites. Or did someone else write that?

    What is your key to happiness?
This will sound funny, but my key is when everything is crossed off my list. When there are not more things to get done I can be a better husband. A better father. And be an easier me on me. Then I can relax and be happy. Of course…. it would be nice if I were relaxing in 5000 sq foot house……along the coast……in the Caribbean. My happiness could be happier then!

     Horror or Science Fiction?
Luv ‘em both but Sci Fi all the way. Funny story about how I knew I was a decent writer. Back in high school we had to write an alternative ending to an Isaac Asimov sci-fi book. My English teacher liked mine so much he gave me an ‘A’ and wrote on the back of the paper…”This is excellent! Where have you been all my life”. I didn’t write again for years!

    Did you take piano lessons and do you still play? Why or why not?
I was horrible at music as a kid. I flunked the trials of Violin and the flutaphone in grade school. Never the piano. I did sing a duo over the radio in my church choir as a youngster.

     Favorite grilled food?

Mmmm…food! My default answer is chicken of some sort or sauce. Its most of anything I ever eat off the grill. Possibly, if I was at the restaurant of my choice, it might be a big piece of Blackened Tuna

     What is the most unusual thing that’s ever happened to you?

Another tough one. Most of the really bizarre stuff is kinda negative and you really don’t want to hear about that. I literally had a mysterious male stalker one time that was pretty bizarre. Howabout Ghosts? One time in the middle of the night, before we had kids, my wife and I were woke up to the sound of the bath tub filling up at a record pace. The spout was wide open and the noise woke us up from two rooms away. It was 3:00am. WTH? Another time a picture hanging on the wall fell off in the middle of the night. We were baffled. I am sure there are other more interesting things than that though. …I’m not really that exciting, huh?

     How do you communicate with family?

Emails and phone calls. I may be looking at emails at night and instead of showing or asking my wife about one I will  actually email her work. We get phone calls from my parents once a week. And emails from my brother and sister occasionally. We are not great communicators.

What is the first thing on your bucket list? Why?

I don’t know if by first thing it’s the most important listing or the next one to accomplish. The most important one is to own a B&B. I love to cook especially some fancy breakfasts, entertain, and put on a show. I get that from my Hospitality background. Most importantly I love meeting nice, fun, interesting people. Some of you may know this by now. How better to have all these things than by running a brothel B&B by the sea? Or in the mountains? Possibly the next thing on the list to accomplish might be our trip to Scotland….in a few years though.

Now I am supposed to tell you 10 interesting things about myself. But I have offered this on previous awards and a series of ‘Tagged’ that went around last year. I just don’t have anything else to offer that you haven’t heard before. I’m not that interesting!

Instead, on the one year anniversary of 3D this week, I thought it might be fun to see what sheer Liebster brilliance has evolved and view some of the 10 quasi-interesting facts from of my Stats:

1. The most viewed post of the past year came from someone other than me. Breezyk’s post on her love for the treadmill was my most viewed post last year. ~ Check her out at the Camel Life. She’s great! In fact, her guest post was also my highest viewed day in 3D. My second most popular post came from another guest blogger, Janice of Daily Dose. Posts I actually write come in after 6 or 7 on the chart…on my own blog. 😦  Thank goodness for celebrity bloggers and these two young ladies from Toronto!
2.  After you take away my deux celebrity posts, and clicks on my Categories pages, the second most viewed posts I have are actually pictures! Lol, I must really suck. These pages pop up as they are the result of my two top ‘Searches’: ‘Housewives of Beverly Hills Wedding’ photo appeared on a post Tightwad Tuesdays: Aim For a Soft Landing, where I preach financial advice,

and

‘Weekend at Bernie’s’ picture where I resemble the cadaver that spends a weekend with some teens. It just screams, “somebody whack me in the head”!

3.  My third most viewed post was actually a ‘reblog’ from Ironic Mom on finding you blues alter ego, Fat Sugar Lee.

4.  When you get down to a post I actually wrote, the most viewed post is a DYLANism called What a Surprise. I am glad people liked this. It’s one of my all-time favorite DYLANisms and really showed her worth to this blog.

5.  Searches: the most popular Search Term was the ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’ followed by 3 variations of the ‘Housewives of BH’. Then people found my blog because somebody out there was looking for Poppy Montgomery Naked; a lot!

Sorry, I have her mostly clothed in my Tagged II post.  Bedtime Stories and Shel Silverstein’s poem snowball was a real popular search term also. ‘Belle and Beast sex’ led someone to me, as well as: ‘get on the bed while i check your bare bottom then give you a smacked bottom’. Yes, that was a search term that found me.

6.  My favorite Search Term however was: ‘does andy at “our life in 3d” have a tight wad’. Thanks Ironic Mom! She search bombed me. At least I think it was her. A close second search was, ‘andy of “our life in 3d” is a great dad.’ Awww. Truly a Liebster moment! What? I didn’t google that!

7.  The top 3 countries with the most views come from Canada, the UK and India. Canada does contain some of my favorite bloggers BreezyK and Janice are but a few. It does look like my blog has reached a good 75% of the world in over 66 countries. Who would have thought ‘Poppy Montgomery’s legs naked’ would be so popular?

8.  The most used ‘click’ from inside my blog was for nothrowaways.wordpress.com, a regular follower and great Dad too. More people clicked on his gravatar and visited his blog than any other link on my site.

And now for a word from  our sponsor:

9. The person leaving me the most Comments (that I did not bribe or stalk) is Derek Mansker from the blog ..drum roll please…nothrowaways.wordpress.com! What?

Bloggers, there is something to be learned here. If you want people to visit your blog more often all you have to do is leave ME a comment or a ‘like’ and they will come running! See how well it worked for Derek? And there is no charge for this great marketing for your blog.

10. The post with the Most Comments on was ‘Tagged II’. But I used a subtle trick, that I apparently forgot about since. At the end of the post I offered Two Truths and a Dare, borrowed from Master Blogger, Ironic Mom, where I offer readers two truths and a lie and invited them to decide which one was the lie.

So, in breaking with the rules of the Liebster I would like to invite 10 Liebster nominees to do 2 Truths and a Dare on your blog. ~ It is sooo much less time consuming.

The rules are you write two things about yourself that are true and one thing that is false and then you (the readers) have to guess which one is false. Can you do that?

I will start off. Readers, which one of these to you think is false?

1) I am good friends with the drummer in Godsmack
2) I have more speeding tickets than you and your whole family and actually lost my license once because of speeding.
3) My two wonderful daughters are not mine.

Which one is false?

Now this is the part I hate. I read many more blogs than 10. It is hard nominating only 10 bloggers for any award. I am using the “less than 200 followers” as a filter here to help narrow down some choices. And if I have nominated you before I may skip you this time. Again, if I missed you I am sorry. Ten blogs I would nominate for the Liebster Award and complete the Two Truths and a Dare are:

Still Learning To Be ~ Smart and Stronger than nails! Plus the closest thing to a celebrity that I know

Running Around In The Land Of Lincoln ~ a fun Lawyer, Mom and Runner

What Up Chickenbutt ~ she’s fun, fitness and a restaurant manager. So was I

Little Bit Of This and That ~ because I owe here

Meiro ~ Very visual and poetic

Purple Calabash ~ A cooking blog from South Africa, glossier than you could imagine. check out her Chillers!

Esenga’s Voice ~ wonderful pictures with a well written meaning

43 Fitness / Lifting My Spirit ~ Two inspiringly fit moms (at my age) making waves on stage

Analyfe ~ an up-and-coming business whiz and great writer

Southern Sea Muse ~ Coastal living in a blog. I love it!

Parenting Creative Kids  (gotcha anyway!)

Congratulations on your Leibster Awards and doing the great job that you do! And thanks again Laura for reading my stuff.

Do you know which line in my 2 Truths and a Dare is false?

~Andy