BTW

A few weeks ago, Monica ("Ramblings of a Crazy") was handing out awards like it was the Oscars or something. Which reminds me, the Oscars are on Sunday and Jon Stewart is hosting again. Yay. As per usual, I have seen very few of the nominated films, although I get snaps for having seen at least one film that wasn't animated or littered with teen wizards. Consequently, it would just be wrong to give my comprehensive list of Oscar picks. Suffice to say:

*Dame Judi Dench won't win anything this year and neither will Helen Mirren. Because they weren't nominated.

*Julie Christie will probably win Best Actress over Ellen Page but that's kinda too bad because even though I love me some Christie, Ms. Page gave an absolutely lovely performance in "Juno" and it would be awesome to see her win.

*I gotta think "Juno" will win best original screenplay. It can't win Best Picture because it was indie and smart and too funny. But at least give 'em the screenplay award.

*"Ratatouille" will win best animated feature because it really was a terrific movie. And I saw it.

*$5 bucks says that the last photo they show during the "In Memorium" bit is Heath Ledger.

Now back to Monica. She gave me some awards. I was deeply touched by this because Monica is pretty much the essence of cool and you'd think that my blog would be far too pedestrian for someone at her level of coolness. So yeah, getting an award from her is kinda like being asked to sit at the hip table in the lunchroom. So thanks for that, Monica.

The first award, which is way awesome, is supposed to be presented to 10 deserving women bloggers. For reasons known only to itself, Blogger won't let me plug in more than a few links per post so it'll be up to you to find the blogs over there on the right and check them out, if you haven't yet.

1) Nicole ("Living in a Second Language) is one of my best real life friends. The fact that she also writes a very lovely blog is just a bonus. Funny, introspective, clever...that's my girl.

2) Dana (Amazing "Grace in the City") writes oh, so charmingly about raising her family and building a church in New York City. One of the things I appreciate about her blog is that she's the kind of Christian who doesn't give the rest of us a bad name. To whit, her faith is deep and profound and sometimes she blows me away with her insight but she's not heavy and preachy and judgemental. Which is always refreshing.

3) Monica gets this one back. HA! Can't help it. The kid rocks. She turned me on to Belle and Sebastian. She watches Project Runway. She rides a bike. She lives in Chicago, one of the truly great cities of the world. There.

4) Kimberly Ann ("Nostalgic Homemaking"). Duh. She's fairly new to Blogtopia but it feels like she's been around forever. She mostly writes about food and housekeeping but with an altogether unique POV. And I bought some fake pearls from her that just rock my world.

5) Boodatude. The woman is insanely talented when it comes to things creative but her writing just slays me most times. Actually, I kinda hate her for that. No. I don't. Yeah, I do. "Hate" in a "I really admire your talent and envy it a bit but you're too charming not to love" sort of way.

6) Auld Hat ("The Voluptuary"). Shut up.

7) Speck ("Worms, Puppies, BBQ"), who seems to be blogging more regularly now. Which is a good thing for Blogtopia. Plus, this woman is whacked. Again, in a good way. The disembodied hand card she sent me for Christmas is coming out every year.

8) Brand new to me is Leah ("Circumstantial Serendipity"), who's been coming around here for a while and who I just got around to checking out. I like her. She's my kinda gal.

9)Greeny ("You Get What You Need") is someone I really hope to have cocktails with someday. She is also my kinda gal. She's one of those people who lives, on the surface, a fairly ordinary life but writes about it in a way that is compelling and fun and sometimes inspiring. Especially when it comes to gardening. Dang, if only.

10) My "City Mouse". Mostly because she's my mouse, but also because she's funny and she thinks and she's not afraid to be honest even when it's hard. She hasn't had the world's cushiest life and you'd think that would make her a hard, brittle person but she's really not. Plus, she doesn't care about spelling.

The other award, thankfully, only has to be passed out to 5 people because that was just exhausting, let me tell you. It's an award for niceness. Nice is way under-rated in the world and it's good to celebrate those who bother.

1) Rosie ("Rosemary's Attic"). Sweet as can be and she gave me a beautiful concertina for my birthday just because she couldn't make it out to my party to play "La vie en rose". I couldn't believe it. Still can't.

2) Hat. Shut up. I have my reasons. She's going to pft at this but I don't care.

3) Same thing with the Bitter One. We opened this coffee shop ("Here's the 90s") and I've been way too much of an absentee partner (although I'm really trying to improve that) and he has never once bitched me out for leaving him with the heavy lifting all these weeks. That's really nice. Especially since it probably goes against his nature. (No it doesn't. I know him. Ha. He's the sweetest thing ever but you didn't hear that from me. We must keep up the charade). Also, he's a really terrific uncle to The Child and he doesn't really have to do that, what with the whole not actually being related thing. But see, he's nice. (Shhhhhh).

4) Buck ("I Laugh, Therefore I Am") . Because you know what kinds of things he does? He does things like buy hard to find cordials on the web and then shares it. He moves out of his apartment for a week to let total strangers live in it. I'm telling you, he is n.i.c.e.

5) Mom ("The Best is Yet to Be"). It's funny that "Mom" is her blog name because when she leaves comments it always makes me think it's my mom until I remember that my mom is Dame Judi. But whenever she does leave a comment (and I've noticed this on the other blogs she frequents) she's always kind and generous and supportive...just like a good mom. I kinda think of her as the übermom of Blogtopia.

and I have to add a 6th, Dariush (as in "Dariush Alavi"). He lives in England and is a very talented writer. I felt pretty honored when we started corresponding. He loves good food and he cooks so we share recipes and stories about food but, as is sometimes the way with bloggy relationships, it has slowly moved out of the realm of the initial connection and into being friends. And who doesn't need a friend in England? Who cooks? Seriously. But he especially gets this nice award (which he has to share with his wife, the Divine L) because a month or so ago he was blogging about these books that he and L had found called Don'ts for Wives and Don'ts for Husbands and they sounded very amusing. I said something in my comment about needing to get my hands on copies and he promptly emailed and asked if he could please buy them for me. Which he then did and shipped Royal Mail (love the foreign postmarks, what?). And they are cute little books full of hysterically brilliant marital advice. Anyvows, point is that was a terribly nice thing for him to do.

As per usual, this handing out awards thing starts feeling funny because there are good reasons to give these awards to all the people on my blog roll. (Except the women blogger one because, well, hi...they aren't all women). Sometimes I think I should do what Sling ("Sling's Domain") does when he gets one and say, "Hey, if you're on the blog roll, consider yourself served".

Maybe next time.