Liebster Post. Finally.

Okay, okay. I will finally post this Leibster award entry before anyone else can nominate me and thereby give me more questions to answer!
Here is how it works: A blogger "nominates" you and you have to give 11 random facts about yourself, answer 11 questions given to you by the blogger, and nominate another 11 blogs (that have fewer than 200 followers). While I am far too lazy and mainstream to actually have a list of 11 up-and-coming young blogs to link you to, I will at least give you 11 blogs to check out, that (as far as I know) have not been Liebstered yet. Thank you to Mercie et Chatons, Barre Barre Black Sheep, and The Traveling Dancer for the nominations and questions (the rest of you may skip this ridiculously long post if you want, I won't judge):
 
11 random facts about me:

1) If I could only eat one type of meal for the rest of my life it would be fresh fruit and french bread with butter. But if I could only eat one THING it would be raspberries.
2) I honestly do not care which way round the toilet paper is facing. For heaven's sake, why do people get so uptight about it?
3) The topper on my wedding cake was a black Dalek and a white Dalek.
4) I can float well enough to stay alive, but I never learned to swim.
5) I have no problem with creepy crawlies and have been known to gently nudge a rattlesnake with a stick to get it off the road, but I will NOT touch cockroaches and I will only take horn worms off my tomato plants via the "clip off the entire branch they are sitting on and throw it over the fence" method (but that is mostly because they make that awful noise! SO GROSS!).
6) I can juggle. I taught myself from a book when I was a teenager. It impresses the hell out of people and hey! Party trick!
7) Except in cases of unusual or extreme circumstance (camping, staying at someone's house, hotel, new apartment that I haven't had a chance to clean thoroughly yet...) I only take baths, never showers. I HATE showers. They make me feel cold and you have to go through all sorts of contortions just to wash all your bits. Forget that.
8) I have nearly no sense of direction. I still need a GPS to get to ballet class if I take the freeway instead of surface streets. I can get home just fine, however.
9) My middle name is Marie, after Marie Curie. Back when I was working retail I once wore a T-shirt with Marie Curie on it and a customer asked me if she was "that famous hooker" (tangentially, my sister was named after a botanist. Sadly, neither of us pursued science. We are both artists. Sorry, Mom!)
10) I wrote two novels when I was a teenager. They are both so bad I shudder to think of them ever being read by another human being.
11) My favorite bands of all time are They Might Be Giants and the Magnetic Fields. But I am pretty sure I'm not a hipster because I never do anything ironically.

from Merci et Chatons:

1. If you could ride any animal fictional/dead/alive what would it be? A velociraptor. Obviously. I would keep him in my yard and paint his talons with sparkly nail polish and he could eat intruders. I would ride him to work and I would never be stuck in traffic again.
2. If money was no problem, where would you vacation in the world first? Well, it's not an exotic dream locale, but I would like to just explore up and down the coast of California for a while, then up through Washington and Oregon. Eventually I would like to visit England/Scotland, Switzerland, and Sweden.
3. Do you like sparkly things? Who doesn't like sparkly things? I mean, come on.
4. Can and will you draw me a picture? I'm on my laptop right now, so sorry. 
5. If you have to fart in public how do you go about doing it? a) crop dust b) go into seclusion c) blame it on the innocent. I didn't realize these were all such carefully planned options. I guess just hope no one notices?
6. If sharks could talk, like in Finding Nemo, and you only got one question, what would it be? I don't really have any deep personal questions I need to explore with a shark, really. And I am pretty shy, so it would probably be something like "hey. Nice weather we're having?"
7. If you were asked to perform a dance in space, would you? I was actually just thinking about this while reading Packing For Mars, (which is a pretty interesting book, actually, and not nearly the epic drag you might expect from the description.) And I was thinking about how, in zero gravity (or the approximation of zero gravity as induced via freefall) all your muscles would have to work in very different ways. You could finally achieve that glorious extension, because you wouldn't have to work so hard just to hold it up there. Of course, there are some really interesting possibilities with tippy toes and graceful launching of oneself off of stationary objects. But also, even a regular person's body gets pretty jacked up in space, and I imagine that a dancer's body would be doubly so. Luckily, if the trip was a short one it wouldn't be too much of a long-term problem, but otherwise we are talking possibly irreversible bone damage (not to mention exposure to much higher levels of radiation than you might think). And then I read that they don't take showers up there, they just use moisty wipes. And then I said never mind.
8. What are your favorite barre/floor combinations? We usually don't do combinations more than a time or two before switching to something else, but since the class is working on recital stuff right now we've got a few routines. The bit from Les Sylphides is probably my favorite, but mostly because the Raymonda thing requires a partner and my partner and I keep shocking each other whenever we touch. ZAP!
9. If you could slap a celebrity for their idiocy, which one(s)? Jim Carrey and Jenny McWhatserface. Mostly for their outrageous and ill-informed anti-vaccination crusade. Seriously, people, celebrities are not doctors. Do NOT listen to them.
10. Salad dressing on or on the side? Side. Because I don't like very much of it.
11. Glass half full or empty? Half broken.

From the Traveling Dancer:

1. What is your best recommendation for new bloggers? Find a theme and stick to it. You'll be amazed how many topics you can cover in the course of exploring your theme. Also? You have to choose a theme that you WANT to write about. That you will write about regardless of whether or not anyone else bothers to read it. Your blog should, first and foremost, be for you.
2. If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be? Mendocino, CA. Does that sound horribly boring? Because it probably is. But, I love it there and spend a week there every year. On the other hand, I am pretty sure that moving away from my ballet studio would be traumatic, and there aren't any really amazing ones down in that area if my internet research isn't steering me wrong.
3. What types of posts and blogs do you tend to comment on the most? Ones that I actually have something to say about.
4. Favorite youtube dance clip? Definitely the parotia bird.
5. Would you give up your day job to dance? Professionally? No, I know what a professional dancer's life is like, and I wouldn't be interested in that so much these days.
6. What is your favorite dance studio? The unassumingly named Ballet Studio.
7. Do you like being corrected in class/what type of corrections work best for you? Hells yes! You won't improve if no one corrects you! Gentle physical manipulation is good (note: not running behind me shoving me forward or grabbing my leg and hiking it up waaaay past my ability to actually hold it in place. Both of which I have experienced from some teachers) and spoken explanations are also good. Even just standing next to me and demonstrating.
8. Favorite book? Favorite quote? I read a lot so I can't really pick out just one. My favorite series are the Discworld books by Terry Pratchett, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Diane Duane's Young Wizards novels. I have a particular fondness for classics, as well as fun and fluffy books that do not follow the "modern lit" template of a deeply unlikable main character and an awkward sex scene that serves no purpose within the plot. Favorite quote: always changing. 
9. Best snack between class? Peanut butter toast with honey. Plus lots of water.
10. What’s your favorite leotard? (brand, style, color) totally not any of the ones I actually own right now. I am really drawn to the ones with mesh or lace bits, but I can't stand the kind that have super open backs. And I prefer black, because I am boring.
11. Best advice you wish would have known when you were younger? It doesn't matter. Seriously. Let it go. No one will be less proud of you. (I'm still working on that, though)

And last but not least, the questions from Barre Barre Black Sheep:

1. What do you hope to get out of blogging? I created this blog as a way to continue writing non-fiction prose (which is one of my great loves) after my regular personal blog at LiveJournal.com basically went under. Everyone abandoned ship to Facebook. At the time the only things I really wanted to write about were my health problems and my new ballet class, so that is what I did here! I eventually went back to my personal blog, as well. Mostly for bitching about stuff.
2. What is your dream job? I would like to do exactly what I am doing now, only it sure would be nice if people would give me money for it.
3. Do you bulk-blog and schedule the posts, or do you post as you write? Sometimes I write more than one post in a day so I schedule the second one to kick in a day or two later. I often start writing something three or four times and let it default in to my drafts folder before I actually figure out what it is I am trying to say and how I would like to communicate that.
4. What three words would your best friend use to describe you on your best day? My best friend is delusional. She thinks I have my shit together in a way that I most decidedly do not. She would say that I am cool and wise and funny or something... and I so am not those things.
5. What is the one thing you want to improve on before the end of 2013? I would like to improve my productivity. HOWEVER, my shop business has been painfully slow over the past few months, so I am taking a bit of a break right now. There is no use making all this stuff if no one is buying it, right? It's all very frustrating.
6. What's your biggest regret in life? I do not regret choices I've made or things I have done. I do not regret people I have loved or places I've been. My only regrets are my personal reactions and emotional responses to those situations.
7. What do you think is the best way to increase readership of your blog? Reading other people's blogs and commenting in useful and thoughtful ways. Don't just go to someone's blog and leave a totally unrelated post comment saying "visit my blog to see what I wrote about cat food, today!" That annoys the hell out of me.
8. What caused you to start blogging? My first blogging experience was with my personal blog. I started it as a way to connect with people during a particularly painful and difficult phase in my life.
9. I'm obviously a fan of your blog; have you ever read mine? Just curious. I do! In fact, I just read it, which inspired me to get off my butt and post this before the questions section could become any longer than it already is!
10. What's the best advice you've ever received? My father once told me to never hesitate to apologize.
11. Where do you hope your blog will be one year from now? Oh, just like it is only I'll be telling you all about the amazing craftsman house I just bought and the incredibly lucrative design contract I just signed and, of course, the fabulous new treatment for rheumatism that my doctor's have designed just for me. Haaaaaaa.

Okay, here are my questions for other people, I suspect most of them will not answer, but there you go:

1. What is your musical guilty pleasure?
2. A movie or book you liked but no one else does?
3. A musician/artist/etc that everyone else thinks is amazing but you just don't "get"?
4. Do you read any children's/YA books now that you are a grown up? Which ones and why?
5. What is your favorite board game?
6. You've just inherited 10 million dollars. What do you do?
7. What is your favorite holiday? Season? 
8. What modern amenity or technology could you never live without?
9. What is your snack food of choice?
10. A period in history that you are particularly interested in?
11. You can travel back in time and give your younger self a hug. Would you?

OKAY. Now. For blogs that I "nominate".
To be honest, I don't even know how I would find out the readership numbers of other blogs, so I am just going to pretend that the rules state "nominate 11 blogs you like" rather than "11 blogs with less than 200 readers".
So.
Here are some good blogs, guys (ballet blogs in bold):

1. Linnea's Garden (she's my sister and a botanical illustrator)
2. The Ornamented Being (costuming)
3. Dancing Over The Hill
4. The Offbeat Chronicles of a Tutu With Tea
5. Enchanted Doll (dolly related, do not click if you think dolls are creepy)
6. The Inner Ballerina
7. Little Girls R Better at Designing Heroes Than You
8. Knit Two, Pointe Two, Bake Two Together
9. Fashion in So (Star Trek and fashion)
10. EPBOT (geeks and girly stuff)
11. Leotards and the Buns in Them