I just learned that the awesomeness that is Oh, The Joys has nominated me for a Blogger’s Choice Award. Thank you so much!!

I have been nominated in the category of, “The Blogitzer”, an award which “will be presented to the blogger who demonstrates the best writing ability on his or her blog.”

The stats at the moment I am writing this post show the following: Dooce: 282 votes, “Using My Powers For Good”: 3 votes.

But I’m not really that upset because, Holy Cow!! I’ve been nominated in the same category as Dooce!!

And also, I have another cool button to add to my blog!!

I am very easily excited

And so, if you feel like sharing a little blogging love, you can click on that cool little button and vote for me-maybe we can break into the double digits!

You can also vote for all your other favorite blogs while you’re there-there is no limit on the number of blogs you can vote for in each category.

Happy Thursday!

To give you some idea of the magnitude of this achievement, just imagine if a rock, which moments before had been totally inert, suddenly came to life and began to expound on the principles of Quantum Physics in four languages simultaneously. That’s a pretty good metaphor for what happened here today.

A few weeks ago I gave a speech entitled, “Black Sheep Girl In A White Sheep World” at my local Toastmasters club meeting. Me being who I am it was of course a humorous speech, so I knew it would be a perfect complement to the writing I do here on my blog.

And so I am very pleased to present to you here my very first podcast ever, “Black Sheep Girl In A White Sheep World”.

2. Thank you also to everyone who has been keeping my family in your thoughts and prayers. Apparently when my grandfather got to the second hospital they discovered that all 5 of his coronary arteries were almost completely blocked, and so last night he had quintuple bypass surgery. He came through the surgery well, and now we are just waiting to see what happens next.

I have designed my own 2-part method of coping with this stress:

Part One: Designated Dining For Disasters

I make sure to get in enough nutrients from each of these four food groups:

-sugar
-fat
-carbs
-caffeine

Part Two: 2-D Action Plan

And I plan activities that rely heavily on

distraction
and
denial

(Along with the time-tested practice of going to bed in one room of the house and awakening the next morning in a completely different spot, with absolutely no memory whatsoever of how I got there. This is extremely bizarre, because I am normally a VERY light sleeper, much like Heather B. Armstrong of dooce describes her daughter: “Sometimes at night while she is asleep in her room at the back of the house I can wake her up from fifty feet away by imagining the sound an eyelash would make if it drifted to the ground.”)

So please keep us in your thoughts, and I will keep you posted.

So if you haven’t yet placed your vote, please do so by Thursday. And remember that all you have to do is this:

1. Go to this site.
2. Scroll down to “Blogs of Summer Voting”
3. Click on the little circle next to “Using My Powers For Good”
4. Click on the “vote” button.

And please spread the word to anyone else that you think will vote for me too!

Thanks!

I am so excited to announce that I am one of the finalists in the “Humor and Satire” category.

Voting takes place Monday, July 24 through Thursday, July 27, so once again I am shamelessly soliciting your votes!

All you need to do is this:

1. Go to this site.
2. Scroll down to “Blogs of Summer Voting”
3. Click on the little circle next to “Using My Powers For Good”
4. Click on the “vote” button.

And please spread the word to anyone else that you think will vote for me too!

Thanks!

Apparently they are hosting “The Blogs Of Summer Awards”, and are currently in the process of accepting nominations.

And since I am totally cool with the whole idea of shameless begging and pleading self-promotion in the interests of tricking people into believing that I’m actually a writer sharing my writing with others, I decided to ask you, my honored readers, if you would be willing to nominate my blog in the category of Humor and Satire.

In order to nominate me, all you need to do is this:
1. Click here
2. Scroll down the page until you see “Comments via Blogger” and “Lots of Chatter”.
3. Click on either one of those two links and leave a new comment stating that you would like to nominate me
-”Using My Powers For Good” by Jenny Ryan
-www.jennyryan.com
-category: humor

Thank you so much!

Jenny

But I really like telling funny stories, so I will just say here at the beginning that, as always, the only person I’m making fun of here is myself, due to my Outstanding Inability To Blend In.

So this weekend I drove up to Greenville, SC in order to attend a women’s conference. It was actually really cool, because the woman who was speaking there this weekend was, back in 1987 and 1988, one of the Youth Ministers at the church I was attending at that time. But she left at the end of that year to go onto other things, and I hadn’t seen her since then.

But then a couple of weeks ago I was on the Internet and I found her website, completely by accident. As it turns out she has become an author and a speaker, and when I found out that she would be speaking at a church that was only 2 hours away from where I live, then I just had to go and see her.

So I did, and she was great. And after the session on Friday night I went down to the front to talk to her and to give her a copy of a picture of us I’d found from the summer of 1988. The people who were organizing the conference were trying to keep things flowing, as there were a lot of people besides me who had come down to the front of the church.

Church Lady: So, are you here for prayer?
Me: No.
Church Lady: (Completely stunned into silence. Apparently no one has ever turned her down for prayer before.)
Me: I’m here to talk to Angela.
Church Lady: Well, then would you mind letting all of these other people (who apparently were there for prayer) go in front of you? (I guess that was my punishment for only being up there to talk.)

Eventually I did get to talk to Angela, and then I went over to the church bookstore to order a recording of the conference. And it was so hot. So hot that my hair was sweating. So hot because the air conditioner in the church was broken, and that is never a good thing, but especially bad when you have a large group of people gathered together in one place.

So I went into the bookstore, and there was this sweet, gentle, elderly, proper Southern church lady there taking the orders. And apparently the suffocating heat had totally dissolved my ability to read people and situations and then make appropriate responses. Because we then had the following interchange:

Church Lady: May I help you?
Me: Yes, I’d like to order a recording of this conference.
Church Lady: OK.
Me: And then I’d like to peel off my skin, lay down in a bathtub, and drench myself in ice cubes.

The poor woman had absolutely no idea what to do with that. So, being the proper Southern gentlewoman that she is, she generously decided to simply overlook my verbal faux pas and continue on to other things.

And even though I had a really good time, and every one was totally generous and kind and welcoming, I did learn an important lesson last weekend.

Church Ladies=SO NOT the target audience for my particular brand of self-expression. Good to know.