My Brush With Fame

I’m here today- my first post of NaNoBloMo!!- to talk about hockey.  Canada’s greatest sport, and well frankly I don’t even watch it, even though I come from London, which has an awesome hockey team- The Knights, and I now live in Ottawa, who has another awesome hockey team- The Ottawa Senators.  Tuesday night our cheerleading team was invited to cheer at an exhibition hockey game at school- Carleton against the U-20 Sweden Team.  We had our uniforms on, and our faces painted and the arena was pretty packed.  We didn’t expect the Ottawa Senators captain to show up though! Yep, Daniel Alfredsson was there. Usually seen looking like this:

Daniel Alfredsson

We even got a picture with him!

Carleton Cheerleaders and Daniel Alfredsson

Okay that’s it for my brush with fame, now here is what I dressed up as on Halloween!

Lauren as Cookie Monster!Lauren as Cookie Monster!

What I can't live without.

As per the 20sbblog carnival, and with it being my turn to blog for NaBloPoMo, I introduce to you not just a thing that I can’t live without, but a person.

Coincidentally, this person is also having her 22nd birthday today! This is Stef, who has been my best friend since I was three.

Stef

When we were children, Stef and I lived 10 minutes apart. We would play dress up (she had the most awesome dress up clothes), we would go to each other’s school dances,  we would play Nintendo 64, and would always go camping every summer with our families (our Mom’s also happened to be best friends).

We would tie bars of soap to our feet with elastics and jump on her trampoline with the sprinkler on underneath.

When we got older, Stef’s Mom moved their family away from the farm and to our nations capital to further her career, so started the family road trips to Ottawa.

I couldn’t live without her so far away, and I was so happy when she came to the same University as me.

Then I moved to Calgary, and can you believe that I didn’t see Stef for 14 months? She got an internship that brought her to Calgary (did I mention how absolutely brilliant and sought after this girl is?) and we got to be inseparable again for a few weeks.

leah and stef

I love this girl, this magificent woman who is there for me in joy and when  I just need to cry.

Happy Birthday Stef!

I just can’t live without her.

Listed! His One Favourite Person Is Actually 56 People

Well friends, here we go! The Five Blondes are embarking on a month-long journey of blogging every day – that’s right, we’re taking part in NaBloPoMo. I don’t remember whose wacky idea this was – maybe Micaela’s or Leah’s – but we all agreed to the schedule that was promptly created, requiring each of us to blog once every 5 days. Yeah, don’t worry, we’re not posting 5 times a day, every day. We don’t want to overwhelm subscribers (do you subscribe to our RSS feed??), and frankly, we’re all way too busy for that. I truly admire everyone who is doing NaBloPoMo solo.

I’m hoping people remember I exist here, as I’ve been posting about once a month since school has started back up. I’m balancing 40 hours of work with 15 hours of class (not to mention the readings and essays and studying…) and I’m close to going mad. Luckily, there is something that keeps me sane: Twitter. Specifically, Twitter Lists. They’re fun, useful, slightly competitive, flattering, creepy, and hot damn, can they be funny! I find myself on an incredible 27 lists (at the time of this writing), only one of which I made myself. The majority of them are lists of ‘locals’, if you will, and lists of 20 something bloggers. And then there are the more…creative lists. For example, I find myself on a list titled “My One Favourite Person“. With 55 other people. Apparently we are all actually the same person! Another list he’s put me on (Hi Phronk!) has put me on is the slightly creepy “Stalkable Locals“, as well as the very general (yet oddly charming) “People Who Don’t Suck“. I also belong to “The Swoon Muffin Society“! Who knew?

I’m sure that the merits of Twitter lists will be a hotly-debated subject in the coming weeks. What’s good about them, what’s bad about them, should you keep your lists private, or risk making someone feel left out if you make them public? Chris Brogan wrote a short post yesterday saying why he’s “not down” with twitter lists and the comments that follow are fantastic. 50+ different opinions/takes on lists and many new ideas on how to use them!

My thoughts are that you should keep small lists private (unless they are super-specific and objective) or perhaps make sure to let your followers know that you’re still working on adding to your lists (assuming you are, of course). Use lists for the greater good by creating lists that others will benefit from – like an awesome list of 20-somethings, or a list of people working in a specific profession (this is a strategy that I’m employing with a Twitter account that I manage for work), or a list of tweeters who might live-tweet a television show once a week.

So my friends, that’s what I have to say (today) about Twitter lists. For you tweeters reading this, have you seen any uber-useful of just plain funny lists? What do you think about the feature in general?