Dear friends and readers, I have had this questionnaire put to me:

1. What is your favorite beverage?
2. How many hours do you sleep at night?
3. What do you eat for breakfast?
4. Do you like to cook and why?
5. How do you spend your “down time?”
6. Do you play a musical instrument?
7. Are you superstitious?
8. Are you an introvert or extrovert?
9. Do you like to camp?
10. What is your ideal vacation?
11. What is the most recent book you have read?

Now, since I feel it would be prudent to answer this questionnaire, I will tell you that my favorite beverage is coffee. I usually don’t eat anything at all for breakfast, because I am too tough to break the fast after a mere four to six hours, which is about how much I sleep at night – whoops, almost skipped that one! I love to cook because it’s fun and constructive, it involves using your hands and making things – I sincerely believe that creation is what we were created for – and it usually involves something delicious which you get to enjoy when you are finished. I spend my down time running or blogging or listening to podcasts while keeping busy with chores. I used to play guitar and keys, but not really anymore. Life took that away from me and I just have to admit it. I’m only superstitious that slacking will do me in. Socially, I’m an introvert; in writing, I’m an extrovert. I love camping; the catch is, I’m still not sure I’m doing it right. My ideal vacation is a foreign beach with lots of good surfing and someone capable of teaching me how. The most recent book I read is The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Ron Jonson; the catch is, I never finished it because I haven’t had a whole lot of time to read it because most everything I read is A BLOG. But that’s okay!

So why the questionnaire? Because I have been nominated for. . .

Wait for it. . .

THE LIEBSTER AWARD!!!

Many, many thanks go to Kerry from Winding Road, who has been tricked into thinking that this blog is awesome! I honor this nomination with a quote from her post:

10) I want to start surfing again

In all seriousness, that is truly inspiring because I now have an idea of what drew her to my blog in the first place, and I love surfing, and she loves surfing and I totally echo her sentiment, except without the word “again” in it. Hat’s off to you, Kerry, for your hat’s off to me, and thank you again, I appreciate your readership!

So I have been guilty of coveting this award, because I thought the rules were just great. You only had to nominate a few bloggers – but it seems somewhere along the line that the rules got changed in terms of how many fellow bloggers you nominate and how many followers they have; Sopphey Says that originally, you’d nominate 3-5 bloggers with less than 3,000 readers. Smooth ReEntry confirms this, and so I thought I would do the blogosphere a favor by not going on a wild goose chase for blogs to nominate. I’ll do three blogs with less than 200 followers because guess what? I’m in love with the little guy, they’re my favorite type and I will help show the world what they’re worth if I can. The rules for my Liebster will be super simple:

Step 1: pick one of the following questions and write a blog post about it:

• What is the hardest choice you’ve ever had to make?
• What kind of music do you like, and why is it better than other kinds of music to you?
• If you could write any kind of book, what category and/or genre would that book fit into? Why would you write such a book and where are you with your current ideas?
• What inspires you to blog on a regular basis?
• Where do you get off?
• What the heck?
• Why?
• What aspects of your writing do you feel that you need to improve, and how would you go about it?

Link your post back to this one so that we can enjoy your response via pingback magick.

Step 2: Pick 3-5 bloggers with less than 200 followers; write a post and nominate them for the award. You may use the currently circulating rules if you wish – answer the questions given to you (me), tell us 11 random things about yourself, nominate 11 with under 200, give them 11 questions of your own to answer – or you may modify the rules as you see fit as long as it makes you happy.

Step 3: Enjoy your freedom! Liebster freedom! LIEBSTER FREEDOM!

And the nominees today are:

The Geeky G4mer
Her Broken Nibs
Heron There & Everywhere

Go and be free, blogger buds!

Disclaimer: Rob just got back from a ten-mile run. He did not eat breakfast and had a handful of Archer Farms Sunny Cranberry trail mix for lunch. Random facts one and two. His wife went to look at a dead person’s stuff. She took the daughter with her, and so Rob is blogging. Random facts three and four. He suffers from narcolepsy, amelogenesis imperfecta, mild OCD, and dry skin; he can’t seem to figure out where his nails are going, and that makes nine. THIS RANDOM FACT LEFT INTENTIONALLY BLANK. Eleventh random fact? He just finished another blog post.