Yikes! Yippee! and Yowza!

Sarasota Magazine puts on an annual Best Of issue … and guess what?! Yours truly was voted a finalist in the blogging category in the Best of 2009 issue that just came out this week!

I just found out yesterday and honestly, am kind of stunned and more than a little honored. It’s kind of heady stuff to see my name listed along the likes of two of Sarasota’s long-adored print (and now also online) columnists — Robert Plunket and David Grimes. (Hey guys, if you’re reading … wanna have lunch?! — oh, who am I kidding? They aren’t reading my blog; they probably don’t even know who I am. They probably saw my name next to theirs and thought it was a gnat smooshed between the pages!)

As an independent blogger, kind of a cowgirl on my own out here in the wild west blogosphere, without an official “job” for a magazine or newspaper … it means a lot to me that my online readers took the time to enter my name into a contest for an offline publication.

To anyone and everyone who entered my name … wow, thanks BIG time. I really appreciate the thought!

If I could, I’d send you all a basket of roses or chocolate, but this two-year old photo of me taken while I was in Philadelphia for the National Society of Newspaper Columnists meeting is all I have to offer at the moment! It was during this conference that I first had the idea of creating a blog … in fact, it was at this conference where I had a drink with Dave Barry and tried to learn how to be funny … and then wrote that FPA-winning column for humor — so hey, that conference has paid for itself … at least in awards!

2007 NSNC conference in Philly

Anyway, you can show the magazine some love by picking up a copy at your local newsstand … buy it, take it home, and then read all about the editors’ picks for best of 2009, as well as the readers’ picks. And if you want to see my name — in all its italicized glory — turn to page 64!

Or, if you’re an online diehard, or one of my out-of-state readers, just click here (you’ll have to scroll down the page quite a bit): MC finally makes it into a glossy! (Well, not counting the very glossy photos the FBI has of me hanging in all those post offices across the country.)