Versatile Blogging Award

Sarah of All the Book Blog Names Are Taken has nominated me for a Versatile Blogger's Award, the acceptance of which means I have to share seven facts about myself and then nominate seven other people.   Strangely enough when this award was making the rounds ten years ago I was tagged then, too,  and since I've kind of done it before I'm just going to list facts about myself  and...not nominate anyone.  Vive l'anarchie!


1. Despite being a lifetime resident of a very deep-south state, I don't have a southern accent. At least, not in public. At home the drawl surfaces, but then it's competing with whatever voice I'm playing with at the moment. Certain potable beverages may also illicit a drawl.

2. I've been fascinated by language in general since I was a kid, and somewhat comically tried to teach myself Italian from a book in 2nd grade. My childhood library still has that same book.  While I've never learned Italian, I have a good elementary Spanish and still retain a little of my college German. I'm currently working on the Spanish with DuoLingo.

3. One of my stranger hobbies is collecting, listening, and memorizing folk music. For obvious reasons I tend to focus on the Anglo-American traditions.  This hobby came from my being exposed to and enchanted by the music of the American Civil War at reenactments.

4. I can't swim. The first time I ever went to a beach was in May 2017, when I stood in the surf of St. Augustine, feeling the sand shift beneath my feet and thinking I get why people become beachcombers now.

5. I've been a Trekkie since I spent three weeks in traction at age 7, unable to read and consigned to watch television all day long from my hospital bed. My favorite series is Deep Space Nine, unrivaled for grand storytelling after the first couple of seasons. Back in the early 2000s my interests in PC gaming and Trek converged to make me the member of a trek-themed gaming clan, StarFleet.   I still have a few friends from those nights -- nearly  twenty years ago now -- when we'd stay up late fighting ship-to-ship battles in ST: Armada.  The game had a sequel made,but

This is an actual screenshot from a buddy of mine and I winning a match of Armada against two other players. Judging by the in-screen chat,  we must have been up to mischief. (I was using the handle, "InnocentBrownBag".)   This would be circa...2001/2002.   

6. I'm a lifelong shutterbug, something that runs in the family.  When I began using reddit last year, it was its user-contributed photographs which drew me in. 

7. I'm an active PC gamer, and have been since I saw a display computer at WalMart running SimCity 2000.    I mostly play older games, however, with the exceptions of The Sims 4 and GTA V.    I have two gaming computers (for different generations of games) and have considered finding a 32-bit Windows 98/XP machine to run legacy titles, but I don't have desk space currently.  My 'favorite' titles are varied, but the most surprising would be Star Trek Away Team (2001). It was not a ground-breaking game, or one with remarkable production quality, but as a young Trek fan the ability to choose my own away team, with different mission developments depending on the people I chose,  was extremely fun.  I was used to the squad-based strategy from Commandoes,  and can still remember  sequences of actions needed to play mission ten successfully. (That mission could be unwinnable based on the order in which you chose your team, because the first two members were instantly separated from the rest, forcing you to solve the first part with your third and fourth choices, and specific gear was needed to rescue them.) I was so into this game I used to write fanfiction about the crew.

Actual screenshot from mission ten of ST Away Team.