This Cooper's Hawk landed on our bird feeder yesterday morning. One moment the finches, wrens, jericoes and quail were flocking about, happily pecking at seeds, the next they'd poofed and this guy appeared, as if manifesting full-blown from Zeus's forehead.Oh yeah, they eat mainly birds. Prowling the feeders seems a titch unfair, though I suppose we're technically still feeding birds...
We've been working the last few days on setting up a new group blog, the Word-Whores. It's Allison's baby and there will be seven of us altogether, which lets each of us blog on one day a week. This is a group of gals who are all some of my favorite people. We plan to launch on January 1, 2011. 1/1/11 - nice symmetry to that.
At any rate, we'll all blog on a similar theme each week, so we wanted to come up with a year's worth of topics. We each submitted at least eight ideas and then voted on the whole list. The top 52 became our year's worth of topics.
It was really fun for me to see the results. (Hey - I like spreadsheets, okay?) Every suggested topic received at least one vote. Six topics received unanimous votes.
The one topic I really didn't like got six votes, too. I was clearly the only person who didn't like it. Marcella - whose sci fi comes out ONE WEEK FROM TODAY! - said that the one topic she didn't like made the list, too. So then we spent some time talking about those topics and how we'd address them when it came time. By the end of the conversation, I had a good idea of what I'd write for mine. And I realized I spent more time thinking about the one topic I didn't like, than all the rest put together.
There's a lesson here somewhere. The same kind of lesson as joining a book group because you'll read books you wouldn't otherwise. Working with a group of people means you entertain ideas you normally wouldn't. It forces you to turn your perspective and see the world from a slightly different angle.
And you know I always like that kind of thing.
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Yeah. What Jeffe doesn't say is that I encouraged her to cheat, cause that's what *I* intend to do. Okay, okay. We'll be following the spirit of the topics, if not the exact letter. Is it pathetic in a geeky, I-wanna-be-one-of-the-cool-kids kind of way that I'm really looking forward to being a Word Whore? Wait. Did that come out wrong?
ReplyDeleteAwesome photo, Jeffe. I like that your group is doing a theme a week. That's a cool idea. My group, the Southern Sizzlers, has no unified theme- we each have a day and our day has a theme, but I like what you all are doing as well. Jillian
ReplyDeleteThis is why I love Marcella - everyone needs a voice of evil!
ReplyDeleteI'm with you *doing sekrit society dance a la Selma Blair*
Thanks Jillian - we'll see how it works!
Yay Jeffe for being the spreadsheet queen! As a future Word Whore myself I did look at several of those topics and have an image of myself rocking in a corner in full fetal position. But I think Jeffe is right - those are the topics that will push me to be more creative. And creative is always a good thing.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting. I look forward to the launch of the blog and I can't wait to see if I can figure out the topic you didn't like. :-)
ReplyDelete"...though I suppose we're technically still feeding birds..." Snort! Okay, that totally appeals to my warped sense of humor.
ReplyDeleteBest of luck to all you whores! (Now, THERE'S something I would never have guessed I'd be typing today.)
~snort~ Linda, I must admit I never thought I'd be celebrating myself as a Whore either. The internet is a strange and wonderful place.
ReplyDeleteYay for the Word Whores!! Can't wait to read the blog!
ReplyDeleteCongrates on the new blog. There is something to be said for team work. I look foreward to it.
ReplyDeleteOh, Jeffe, you're too honest. As Keeper-of-the-Poll and Compiler-of-the-Spreadsheet you could have snuck that topic out the back the door and none of us would have been the wiser. Oh, or told us it had the Clap.
ReplyDeleteSure thing, Kerry - I think we'll all be doing some fetal rocking at some point.
ReplyDeleteKeena, it will be interesting to see if you can spot the one I didn't like. My luck, you'll think it's every post!
It's all a part of the food chain, Linda, right? And so are Word Whores!
Thanks Danica and Cynthia - hopefully we'll live up to expectations!
I must be too honest, KAK, because such a thing never occurred to me. I'm too much of a scientist to discard a data point, I guess. I *could* have called it an outlier... dammit!
How cool is that. I love the idea of working with others because it does force you to step outside your comfort zone and the one thing social networking has taught me is to do that. I look forward to reading this new blog and good luck word whores.
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