Reflections From The Pond

You know that feeling you get when someone does something nice to you, something they didn’t have to do but chose to do because they wanted to. Something you didn’t expect but lightened up your day. 

Could be small things like holding the elevator door for you when you get to work, or helping you with the baby stroller on the bus, or noticing that you got a new haircut (and complimenting you on it for extra sunshine).

Could be bigger things like getting a MVP award from your guild or being listed by another blogger as someone they enjoy reading.

This last happened to me today – and it happened twice!! Two people, two bloggers in the WoW-blogosphere actually listed me as a worthy and enjoyable read!

Elleiras at Fel Fire and Daria at Pixels - A Gaming Blog both listed me for the Honest Scrap Award, a meme that is floating around in the blogosphere.

Being a curious and nosy person, I backtracked this award for a long time and many clicks today, going through blog after blog of the most varying denominations, WoW blogs, family blogs, mom blogs, religious blogs, sober alcoholic blogs, make-up blogs, fashion blogs, history blogs and many many other kinds of blogs.

It was interesting and enlightening to see the immense amount of blogs there are out there, and it was also pretty vexing to see how many of these were shoddily kept. Links going to the root page of the blog and not to the post where the award was given had me searching many of those blogs for the back link to the previous award giver. You know how many blogs don’t have a search function? Many! You know how many blogs don’t have working achives? Too many. You know how many blogs didn’t even link to the award-giver but just named them? Quite a few.

I got as far back in time as november 2008, but there I got lost on both my backtracking threads, once because the blog in question was temporarily disabled and once because that blogger had the most complex and incomprehensible blog structure I have ever seen! Don’t all bloggers want visitors to be able to navigate their site rather easily? Or do they rely on friends and family so much that they don’t bother trying to make a visitor-friendly site?

Googling Honest Scrap Award didn’t help much either, and wikipedia was so far totally ignorant about the meme, so I will have to settle for not knowing the origin of this Award :-(

But, I digress, the blogs that listed me are very visitor-friendly and well-written and I am very honored and happy to have been included in their Award Lists! Thank you!

The Honest Scrap Award itself goes like this:

This award is bestowed upon a fellow blogger whose blog content or design is, in the giver’s opinion, brilliant. 

There are some additional rules when accepting this auspicious award it seems;

You must write a post bragging about it! – check!

You must include the name of the misguided soul(s) who thinks you deserve such acclaim and link back to said person(s) so everyone knows he/she/they are real – check! (althought I would not label either Elleiras or Daria misguided, on the contrary they seem to be on top of things most of the time!)

You must list ten honest things about yourself!

1. I am nosy and curious and love solving riddles (thus my brief obsession with the origin of this Award).
2. I spent my formative years reading science fiction and fantasy and I dreamed of becoming an astronaut. I still read sf and fantasy but only very sporadically wish I had pursued that astronaut career a bit more.
3. These days I dream of getting me a sail yacht and make a living as a novelist/journalist while I sail around the world.
4. I am six feet tall and really skinny, thus I am always dressed in thick sweaters and socks to stave off that shivering chilliness. WTB hot climate.
5. I work as an engineer at the local power plant.
6. I have played WoW since early 2006 and have no plans to quit just yet.
7. I prefer wine to beer.
8. I love skydiving but I would be terrified to jump off a mountain for this.
9. I have some budgies and a parakeet and would gladly trade them for a dog and sell the dog on their screechiest days. This goes for the kids as well.
10. Although I would like to view myself as cool and cynical I am usually a wet hen and get soppy over things like roses and raindrops and whiskers on kittens.

So, check that too!

The last (but not the least) requirement for this award is to choose a minimum of seven blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have seven friends. Show the seven random victims’ names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog. Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon.   

I don’t read that many blogs regularly since I am often a bit limited for time (only 24 hours in a day!) and I am simply going to list 7 of those blogs I enjoy reading. I guess most of them have already been tagged but I’ll say like Elleiras, don’t feel obligated to participate (if you don’t want to, that is; if you want to, go for it!), but know that you are read and appreciated.

Jac over at Jaxperience. I met Jac for the first time when I transferred to Aerie Peak and Ascendo Tuum and we spent many raids in TBC healing together with our priests. We also spent a lot of time trying to two-man (or one-man-one-woman) the old world dragons with his warrior and my priest, and then we basically levelled together through all the Northrend dungeons with my shaman and his warrior, imba healer-tank team. Jac was a frequent visitor on my blog and then he took the plunge and started one of his own.

Aleathea at Hearthstone, a new aquaintance of mine. She writes intriguing stories and articles about role-playing, guild life and raid leading.

Big Bear Butt, one of the biggest WoW blogs out there with a focus on feral druids but he and his wife writes about pretty much anything. He was also one of my inspirations when I started blogging and although I have drifted a bit away from the feral druiding I often stop by his site for an interesting read anyways.

Batgrl at Warcraft and Other Hooha, who has a knack of finding those odd places and funny things in WoW.

Flintlocke’s Guide To Azeroth and its sequels by Fargo is the most brilliant WoW comic I have ever seen and I have laughed so much at it, so it definitely deserves a spot here on my list.

Although they have already been listed and awarded by other bloggers, I would like to include Larísa at the Pink Pigtail Inn, Oriniwen at Artisan Level and Vonya at the Egotistical Priest as well in this list of mine.

Alert readers will see that the blogs I list are also the ones found in my blogroll to the right. (What can I say, I am a shy one and have few friends :-)

I know there are many more awesome blogs out there, and I wish I could find the time to go visit them all.

If you enjoyed this post check out these posts as well!

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