it seems to me...

the tree of happiness

Steve Hayes has tagged me with the "Tree of Happiness" award — no, make that the Tree of Happiness "award".

First, the rules of the award:

Link to the person who gave the award to you.
Post the rules on your blog.
List six things that make you happy.
Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog
Let the person who awarded you know when your entry is up.

So, six things that make me happy:

Listening to my son tell me what he's learning in kindergarten
Hiking on a nature trail
Planting my vegetable garden in the spring
Looking at the night sky away from the lights of the city
Reading a good book
Travelling outside the U.S.

Now for the hard part: I'm not sure there are six people who a) read my blog and b) participate in memes. Heck, I'm not sure there are six people who read my blog. But I'm going to tag Blog Meridian, Questing Parson, Art Ruch, Gavin Richardson, Henry Neufeld, and Mark Eades.

Labels: memes

56-5 book meme

via Art's Strange World

(o) 13 ... g6 14 c4 BG7 15 c5 Nh5 16 a4 dxc5 17 axb5 left Black with an ugly position in Fischer-Wade, Buenos Aires 1960. - Modern Chess Openings 13th Edition, edited by Nick DeFirmian and Walter Korn.

Rules:
* Get the book nearest to you. Right now.
* Go to page 56.
* Find the 5th sentence.
* Write this sentence on your blog.
* Copy these instructions as commentary of your sentence.
* Don’t look for your favorite book or your coolest but really the nearest.

If you'd like to participate, consider yourself tagged.

Labels: books, chess, memes

for better, for worse: 5 ways blogging has changed my life

Keith McIlWain has tagged me from a meme created by L.L. Barkat. Here are the rules should you decide to keep them:

1. Write about 5 specific ways blogging has affected you, either positively or negatively.

2. Link back to the person who tagged you.

3. Link back to the parent post (L.L. Barkat is not so much interested in generating links, but rather in tracking the meme so she can perhaps do a summary post later on that looks at patterns and interesting discoveries.)

4. Tag a few friends or five, or none at all

5. Post these rules — or just have fun breaking them

How blogging has changed me:

1. I've always had trouble articulating my thoughts. When I try to speak, the words all swirl together and I can't put them in the right order. But by putting them in writing, organizing them on the screen, and revising — and returing to the same themes later from a different angle — I'm finding it easier to organize them in my head when I want to say something. If blogging did nothing else for me, this one thing would make it all worthwhile.

2. I've met a lot of interesting people who have interesting things to say. I have more than 100 blogs I enjoy reading: some who express things in a way I'd like to be able to; some who provoke me to think again about things I thought I understood; some who give good advice about zombies.

3. As a result of keeping tabs on so many blogs, I don't have as much time for my other interests as before. At times I will cut back, skim most blogs, and rarely update my own, but I've found that the benefits of blogging outweigh the negatives.

4. In the past I've enjoyed traveling, having visited about half the U.S. states and nine foreign countries. Because of my current family situation, I can't travel right now; however, by reading blogs from people around the world, I get to experience a little bit of what's happening out there.

5. I can't think of any other ways at the moment, so I'll break the rules and stop at four.

I'm going to tag the following people, some of who may not participate in memes. That's OK. And if your name isn't here and you'd like to participate anyway, feel free to join in: