Friday 9 March 2012

About Being Versatile

A while ago, Kay very justly received the Versatile Blogger Award and kindly listed me on her post as one of the bloggers she deems eligible for the award. Thank you, Kay, you know I was well chuffed! 

With one thing or the other, it just took me a while to get round to write my own post about it, and I know I will have problems in finding seven other blogs who deserve the award, simply because they have already all been nominated by you or by others :-) 
But the "rules" state I should say seven things about me, so here goes: 

1. I can lift my left eyebrow independently of the right one, but not the other way round. 
2. When I was a teenager, I was very much into basketball, both playing it myself and watching the matches of our local team. 
3. Once upon a time, I learnt to play the guitar (at age 12), and later, at age 16, the piano. 
4. I speak four languages, although one of them is a bit rusty. 
5. When I was little, I used to long for long, thick, curly hair in abundance, such as my sister and my mother had, and I found it very unfair that I should be the only one in the family looking so different from the others. 
6. Unlike many people I come across in my line of work, I really enjoy working at trade shows and fairs. 
7. I am a chocoholic. 

As for listing seven other blogs who should receive the award - like I said, this is difficult for me because most of those I would have named already have the award, and so it would just be going back and forth. But please do have a look at those kind people who are listed as my followers on here; almost all of them have their own blog, and all their blogs are versatile - there is not one of them who just stick to one topic (which would not make them versatile bloggers, would it?). 
So, please have your own pick out of the 60 or so blogs you can explore from here. 

By the way, my being versatile as a blogger is due to the simple fact that I like having things all neatly in one place; I know some of you divide what they post between photo blogs, recipe blogs, family blogs etc., but I find it much more comfortable to have everything here. To keep some form of order, I have introduced labels earlier this year, so if you want to see what recipes I have posted here, or find out more about my travels, all you have to do is click on the respective label just below my blog header, and read what's there. 

It is time now for me to start the last working day of this week - have a good weekend, all of you!

28 comments:

  1. Hello Meike:
    Many, many congratulations on your very well deserved award. And what a very sensible and charming way of overcoming the problem of who to nominate.

    How splendid to be such a linguist - truly a gift as we continue to struggle to master a new language and, in the process, abandon those we learnt when younger.

    Jó hétvégét!!

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    1. Thank you, Jane and Lance!
      My Hungarian is non-existent, but I suppose Jò hétvégét means something like congratulations or thumbs up or some other cheerful expression.
      Yes, my French, learnt when I was about 12, has suffered greatly by my Italian, learnt in my early 20s, and of course from lack of practice.

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  2. I also like the variety of your blog.
    Did you hear by the way of the librarian in Germany who discovered some ancient folk tales? She was on the radio here this morning but I didn't catch which part of Germany.

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    1. Jenny, I did a bit of research on your mention of the discovery, until then I had not heard about the event. It was in Bavaria, Passau. Thank you for your kind comment, and for keeping to come back and commenting!

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  3. Ciao Librarian,complimenti per il premio che hai vinto, meritatissimo!!!!Bella l'idea di rigirarlo ai tuoi followers,grazie quindi anche da me!!!
    Ti abbraccio e ti auguro un buon fine settimana!Cri.

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    1. Grazie tanto, Cri - spero che stai meglio oggi!

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  4. "I can lift my left eyebrow independently of the right one, but not the other way round." What a great thing to tell us about yourself. I had an uncle who could wsggle his ears - that was his great claim to fame. My face seems pretty boring by comparison.

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    1. While I have yet to meet anyone who can wiggle their ears, I had an aunt who was able to reach her nose with the tip of her tongue. And another one who used to entertain us kids during (to us) otherwise boring family gatherings by burping the alphabet.

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  5. I enjoyed learning more about you. :-)

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  6. I loved reading all those wonderful things about you, being very impressed with your eyebrow-lifting skills! I was so sorry, though, to hear about your kitty's death! Our cat is older as well and I can tell that he's slowing down a little bit. Like you said, as long-time pet lovers we do expect this and are mentally prepared, but the heart still aches! Thinking of you!! xoxo Silke

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    1. Vielen Dank liebe Silke, das ist sehr nett von dir!

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  7. It's always fascinating to learn little known things about people. I used to think that if I had three wishes I'd use two to wish for an ability with languages and with the piano. Unfortunately I have neither. I am, however, a recovering chocoholic and can now have a single piece with my coffee without craving more.

    What CJ/John/Scriptor didn't mention is that our Mum could couch the tip of her nose with her tongue. Not many people know that.

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    1. Oh! I read this about your Mum only now, after having written my reply to John's comment where I mentioned one of my aunts having the same ability as your Mum. How funny is that :-)
      Hmmm those three wishes are a very interesting thought to follow. Actually, worth an extra blog post, don't you think?

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  8. or perhaps touch the tip of her nose. Silly me.

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  9. Dear Meike,
    I think that eyebrow lift is exactly like Mr. Spock from Star Trek and I can do it too!
    Now, can you make the "Live long and prosper" sign with your hand too?
    Does that mean that when you played basketball you could curse in all those different languages too?
    I wish I had thought to just say look at all my followers too! Doggone it, that was a job to try to pick seven to put on there! Almost as hard as trying to think of something about myself!
    "Let me entertain you, let me make you smile...I'm really versatile". That's you!

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    1. Kay, you are always so sweet! Indeed I can do the Vulcan greeting - I'm an old trekker at heart (that is how I originally met Steve, by the way - in a Star Trek chat room back in the days when Paramount were hosting them on their own servers), and one of the smaller ambitions in my life is to one day own a little red dress like the out-of-this-world beautiful Nyota Uhura used to wear.

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    2. I did remember that is how you met your Steve. And I wish I could explain what Star Trek meant to me...oh dear, I feel another idea for a post coming on... do you see what you have done for me, my friend, Meike, I am thinking more and more and writing and writing...
      Thank you for telling me to have my own blog, I am enjoying it immensely!
      We could make the TV show again, and you could be Uhura. Guess who I would be, I would be Spock's human mother! Who would the other characters be? We could re-people the Enterprise with our fellow bloggers! Let's think about it, shall we?

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    3. Sounds like a fun game to me, Kay :-) But if I was to choose whom to represent out of all the Star Trek characters, I'd be Jadzia Dax. Admittedly, she does not get to wear the little red dress, but she's cool!

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    4. She is actually sehr oder über cool surely: soooo intelligent and learned and with a name to inspire. The fact that I've heard of her when I've never seen any of the ST series after the original ST must say something about her character. Actually I'm not even sure how I came to know her name. Odd.

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    5. And who in the Star Trek universe would you be, Graham?

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    6. I'd love to think that I could be Spock but I'm not that perfect and I'm far too emotional (OK he did have the occasional lapse) or Kirk but he's just not me. Scotty would be ideal because he was down to earth and believable but I'm not really the engineering type. So I suspect I'd end up as - oh dear what was his name - the Doc, Bones, McCoy? No. I retract all that. I'm going to be Kirk because, in many ways, he was the least perfect of them all.

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    7. He was just a little too prone to get into physical fights, wasn't he? :-D

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    8. I'd overlooked that slight flaw and I'm certainly not the fighting type. Which one was the least decisive?

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    9. Umm...that's a difficult question! Maybe it was Wesley Crusher (the teenage son of Dr. Beverly Crusher, from the Next Generation). But then again, he WAS still a teenager. A lot of people didn't like him, because he was a veritable clever-clogs. I liked him, and was sad to see him leave.

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    10. Ah. Never even heard of him. I'm not too au fait with anyone outside the first series. Which is why I was surprised I knew of Jadzia Dax.

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    11. If I can think of anyone from the original series whom you could "be", I'll let you know :-)

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