Lieb and Let Lieb

Recently, Mom on the Edge (who writes about multicultural and special needs parenting over at Mom in Two Cultures) nominated me for a Liebster Award.

Like her, I hadn't heard of it before being nominated...apparently this is an award given to up and coming bloggers (not my words!) who have fewer than 200 followers.  According to Google Translate, "Liebster" means "dearest" in German--hey, it's been a long time since the last German class I took in college--so I'll take the nomination as a compliment and run with it.

The rules vary widely depending on where you look, but are generally as follows:

1) Answer 11 questions posed by the blogger who nominated you
2) Post 11 random facts about yourself
3) Pass the award along to 11 fellow bloggers
4) Pose your own set of 11 questions to those bloggers

Here goes:

These are the questions posed by MotE:

1) What's your favorite TV show?
Big Bang Theory.  No question.

2) Which app do you wish existed but doesn't?
Honestly can't think of one.  Either pretty sad, or a tribute to the ingenuity of app developers.

3) If you could travel anywhere, where would you go?
Greece. Still on my lifetime bucket list.  Would love to ride the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express too.

4) With which cartoon character do you most identify?
The mother in the Baby Blues comic strip.  Does that count??

5) Which is worse, cooking or cleaning?
Cleaning!!  I like cooking and am an enthusiastic baker.

6) What's your favorite book?
No possible way to answer this question--too many possibilities!!  Pride and Prejudice, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Murder with Peacocks (Donna Andrews--one of the funniest books I've ever read), Jane Eyre, Murder on the Orient Express, and Little Women would all make the short list.  

7) What's your earliest memory?
Pretending to be asleep when my mother came upstairs to check on me at naptime.  I must have been three or four.

8) Do you like roller coasters (literally, not figuratively?)
Not anymore.  I did as a child, but now trying to keep my head from banging around on them gives me headaches!  My husband gets ride duty at the county fair and amusement parks.

9) Are you good in math?
I got all the way through calculus II with very respectable grades but hated every minute of it!  My brain does better with words than numbers.  

10) What's your pet peeve?
People who walk slowly in front of me when I'm in a hurry!  And rude children.  (May I have two??)

11) Why do you blog?
It's a creative outlet, an opportunity to vent and/or opine, and a source of connection with like-minded people whom I'd never 'meet' otherwise! 


And 11 random facts...

1) I played the trumpet in my university's marching band.  (At various times in my life, I have played the trumpet, organ, saxophone, drums, flute and guitar.) 

2) My family was evacuated to Germany from Tehran, Iran when the Shah fell in 1979. My dad had just taken a job there a few months previously. We lost a good chunk of our household goods and two dogs when we left (thankfully, an Iranian colleague of Dad's took in the dogs to save them.) 

3) The only 911 call I've ever made was to report a runaway horse.  No joke.

4) In high school and college, I participated in a lot of Model United Nations events. Worst one ever was being assigned to portray Iraq a month after Saddam Hussein's forces invaded Kuwait! 

5) I speak Mandarin Chinese passably well and understand some German. 

6) I have a Ph.D. in Cell and Molecular Biology.

7) I have been inside the Great Pyramid at Giza, Egypt. Very cool unless you are claustrophobic--fortunately, I'm not. Have also been inside King Tut's tomb.  

8) My husband has to watch Notre Dame football games for me and tell me what's going on, since I get too emotionally involved in the games when I actually sit in front of the TV!

9) I played varsity high-school basketball. No surprise given my height. I was less than useful between the keys (slow with dubious ball-handling skills) but effective under the basket at both ends. 

10) I get great joy out of working in my garden in the summer. As a kid forced to help my mom in the yard, I swore that when I had a home of my own I would dig out all the dirt, replace it with concrete, and paint the concrete green, but that has not happened. My kids and I have fun growing vegetables and fruit in our little patch out back (which we have to fence to keep the deer out!) 

11) I don't much care for the beach. (Heresy, I know, but there it is.) 


I hereby tag the following bloggers:

(FYI, I'm not paying much attention to the number of followers these bloggers have--just tagging the bloggers whose answers I am interested in seeing!  And if I get 11, it will be dumb luck...the rules vary on that too and I am not that uptight.)

1) Momo Fali (http://www.momofali.com/)
2) NOLA (http://justicewithbiscuits.blogspot.com/)
3) Ameena (http://fancythatfancythis.com/)
4) Lady Jennie (http://aladyinfrance.com/)
5) Solitary Diner (http://solitarydiner.blogspot.com/)
6) Stacey (http://anymommyoutthere.com/)
7) Anthea (http://reluctantmemsahib.wordpress.com/)


My questions for them:

1) Dogs or cats?
2) Which do you like better: jewel colors or pastels?
3) Gold or silver/platinum?
4) What is your dream weekend?
5) What would be the first thing you'd change about yourself if you could?
6) What is your favorite thing about yourself?
7) What is your favorite quotation?
8) If you were to die tomorrow, what would be your last meal request?
9) List the five words that best describe you.
10) Do you see the cup as half full or half empty?
11) Why do you blog?

Tagged bloggers, please put a link to your response (should you choose to accept the "honor") in the comments!