This month, she’s celebrating her 4th blog anniversary, and she’s got an EPIC contest with over 20 sponsors all giving away AWESOME loot.

Such as:

- Fascinations is giving away a $100 gift card to their stores/site.

I ordered internet before I left for the East Coast back in May from a local service provider, hoping to avoid the likes of Comcast and AT&T. Great idea, but it [...]]]> Thank the freakin Lord — I have internet. (For the past few days, I’ve been bumming off my neighbor’s unsecured (but very weak) signal.)

I ordered internet before I left for the East Coast back in May from a local service provider, hoping to avoid the likes of Comcast and AT&T. Great idea, but it meant there needed to be two installation visits, rather than just one. Since I was going to be gone, I left it for my girlfriend to deal with. She tried, but with the logistics of trying to let people in and blah blah blah it’s not interesting, nothing actually got done while I was gone. So when I got back on Sunday, we still didn’t have internet, and there were still two installation appointments ahead.

Fast forward to today — final installation appointment happens, and hooray! The green light is on! And I have internet.

…Sort of. Turns out, I managed to scramble something in my computer by resetting the router the wrong way, and it took me all day and finally a frustrated (and expensive — $35, since my warranty had expired) call to NetGear’s tech support to figure it all out.

Long story short: I HAVE INTERNET, YO.

Which means … posting resumes … TOMORROW! I’ve got so much to say! Phew.

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This post, the return of the netz, originally appeared on alphafemme on June 3, 2010.

1. Thank the person who gave you this award. 2. Share 7 things about [...]]]> A long, long time ago, both Jude and FemmeFairyGodmother anointed me as a Beautiful Blogger. I have been remiss in not acknowledging and passing the award along, as I ought to have done, according to the rules, which are as follows:

1. Thank the person who gave you this award.
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Pass the award along to 15 bloggers who you have recently discovered and who you think are fantastic!
4. Contact the bloggers you’ve picked and let them know about the award.

Okay, so, first things first. Thank you Jude and FFG so much for thinking of me as a beautiful blogger, and sharing it with your readers! I appreciate the love :)

Now, 7 things about myself. Hmmmmmmmm.

1) I have mild scoliosis. It makes me kind of self-conscious about my back, because I know it’s not symmetrical. Yeah, I know, fuck that shit, celebrate uniqueness, yay! Still self-conscious about it.

2) I’m very much a book person. Love looking at them, reading them, holding them, smelling them, being surrounded by them. Libraries and used book stores are my favorite indoor spaces. I have a very, very hard time getting rid of books, and when I moved to California, about 2/3rds of the stuff I shipped were boxes of books. I could never feel quite at home in a place without shelves and shelves of books.

3) My favorite color is mustard yellow.

4) I used to love dollhouses and collected miniatures. This was maybe from about the age of 8 until the age of 14. I built my own dollhouse when I was 8 and then became fascinated with furnishing it and decorating it. Foreshadowing? My favorite thing to do was re-arrange the furniture. I rarely played story lines with it, but I loved to take everything out, eliminate the clutter, put things back in and re-decorate. Also foreshadowing?

5) The hardest thing about my parents’ separation right now is that when I’m visiting them, as I am now, I no longer have time where I’m just hanging out on my own at their house. I can’t just be here anymore. I have to be spending time with them. So when I’m visiting my mom, she thinks it’s borrowed time and tries to cram all our time with activities and conversations and meals (tomorrow though? mother-daughter mani-pedis — not going to complain about that!). And when I’m visiting my dad, he thinks it’s borrowed time and though he’s not an activities person, we’re definitely actively hanging out whenever I’m there. It’s tiring. Love my parents, but it’s tiring.

6) The first time I ever kissed a girl, I wasn’t identifying yet as a lesbian. So afterwards, I thought to myself, “well, now I can say I’ve kissed a girl!” and I felt very accomplished, akin to the feeling I get when I cross something off a list. Little did I know…

7) I do not support the institution of marriage on an intellectual level. And yet I really, really, really want to get married, and I even want some parts of my getting-married process to be somewhat traditional. I want to have an engagement ring and a wedding ring, I want to have a ceremony where we exchange vows, I want to wear a beautiful (maybe even white) dress and have my best friends and family there, I want to symbolically and publicly commit myself to my spouse. Hypocritical? Yes, certainly. And I do intend to be absolutely intentional about everything that goes into it. But, well, it remains an institution I don’t intellectually support. I’m banking on coming up with some sort of compromise in the next few years before it would ever even come up.

And now! Part 3: pass the award along to 15 bloggers I have recently discovered who are beautiful. Well, let’s be honest: I don’t read more than a few dozen blogs, and there certainly aren’t 15 that I’ve discovered recently and committed to reading on a regular basis. But there are a few, and I’m really thrilled to take this opportunity to tell you all to GO READ THEM. NOW. Some of them are newer bloggers, and some are just bloggers I hadn’t read until the past year. Without further ado:

1) Mackenzie blogs at Queer Grrl in the City and she is one of my absolute favorite blogs now. She’s the kind of writer who not only has a way with arranging words, but also has a way with using them to really reach you. And she’s an absolute sweetheart. I want every one of you to add her to your blogrolls.

2) JB at To the FemmeMobile is another one I have in my Google reader. She’s funny, candid, adorable, and so fucking astute I can’t handle it. Everything she writes, I’m like “omg! yes!” She writes about things butch/femme, things sexy, things gender queery, and things like getting bitten by a dog.

3) Kaitlin writes at Not Just a Femme and she is one of the loveliest, funniest, sweetest people I’ve met online thus far. I was Twitter friends with her first, and when she moved to her current blog home, I started following her blog, too. She doesn’t post super often, but her posts are just as personable as her tweets and her comments on other folks’ blogs (including mine!) and I *almost* feel like I know her in real life, even though I don’t. YET.

4) Kara, who writes at The Adventures of Kara and Jessica, is one of my new favorites too. She leaves some of the sweetest, most supportive comments here, always so supportive and positive and encouraging. She blogs about sex, kink, fashion, and “regular” things (music, life, etc.) over at her and her girlfriend’s blog, and I’ve gotten some great ideas from her, both sexual and fashionable. She’s kind and generous and really smart to boot!

And lastly, I’d like to throwback to both Jude and FFG, since they’re both relatively new reads of mine as well. Jude hasn’t failed to make me laugh once in the time I’ve been reading her blog. She has the amazing ability to put a hilarious spin on daily life. On top of that, she’s got an amazing relationship with her wife which has been proof for me that yes, marriages can work, commitments can last. I wish I could adopt Jude as my lesbian aunt.

And FFG really is like a femme fairy godmother. I love her posts doling out relationship advice and cosmetic preferences. She’s the type of person to envelope you in love and warmth and goodwill. And her Butch Swoon list, featuring real-life butches, is, well, swoon-worthy.

So, that concludes my Beautiful Blogger awarding. This turned into quite a lengthy post! But if there’s anything you’ve gotten from it, it’s this: add these folks to your list of blogs to read.

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This post, beautiful blogger, originally appeared on alphafemme on May 25, 2010.

I’ve been nominated for a Lezzy Award in the Personal Blog category.

So, what this basically means is that one of you (or [...]]]> I certainly didn’t expect this to happen, but, well, I am a lezzy, and this is a personal blog, so semantically, anyway, this sort of makes sense:

I’ve been nominated for a Lezzy Award in the Personal Blog category.

So, what this basically means is that one of you (or several even!) likes my ditherings here well enough to think I deserve an accolade. I am deeply flattered. Thank you!

If any of the rest of y’all are inclined to nominate me too (nominations are being taken until February 22nd, at which point the top 5 blogs in each category with the most nominations will become Finalists), here’s how you do so:

1) Click on that pretty pink square right up there.

2) Click on that blue banner right at the top of that page that says “The 2009 Lezzy Awards – Nominate Your Favorite Blogs! – Click Here”

3) Copy/paste my URL in the “Personal” section (is it weird that my fingers kept accidentally typing “sextion”?) of the little pop-up box.

4) Lather, rinse, and repeat every day! If you feel so inclined.

5) Also don’t forget to nominate your favorite blogs in the other categories. Check out my blogroll for my favorite blogs if you’re lacking inspiration!

And I might just add that regardless of what happens, I’m touched that I was nominated in the first place, and that in itself is a gift. When I started writing here, it was just me and my thoughts. I never, ever imagined that I’d be getting several hundred page hits every day, or that I’d have people reading and commenting and sending me kind and thoughtful emails. People care, and that’s pretty fucking amazing. So thank you all so much.

And if you’ll excuse me, I have some real posts to draft. I’ll be back in the morning!

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This post, you got me at “lezzy”, originally appeared on alphafemme on February 16, 2010.

“Strap on” is a verb, as in, “I’m going to strap on this dildo.” In queer/kink lingo, the object (“this dildo”) is often left out because it’s implicit in context. (In other contexts, not so much: “I’m going to [...]]]> You ask for it, you get it. All of you who are not grammophiles, kindly ignore.

“Strap on” is a verb, as in, “I’m going to strap on this dildo.” In queer/kink lingo, the object (“this dildo”) is often left out because it’s implicit in context. (In other contexts, not so much: “I’m going to strap on my seatbelt.” Not that anyone actually says that.) But the phrase “strap on” has two components: strap (a verb), and on (a preposition). Together, they make a verbal phrase. A hyphen is not used because the verb will change form according to person and tense (“I strapped on yesterday,” “she loves strapping on” etc.). So as a verbal phrase, it’s “strap on,” two words, no hyphen.

As an adjectival phrase, it needs a hyphen. The rule is that when two or more consecutive words make sense only when understood together as modifying a noun that follows, those words (excluding the noun) need to be hyphenated. Think of, for example, the phrase “small business.” “I own a small business,” but “I belong to a small-business community.” The phrase “small-business” is an adjectival phrase that describes the word “community.” Another example, taking a verbal phrase, might be “follow up.” “I will follow up with you tomorrow,” but “we need to schedule a follow-up call.” The phrase “follow-up” describes what kind of call it will be.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “but strap-on isn’t an adjective!!!!!!!” You’re right, sort of. It isn’t anymore. See above, where I said that the verbal phrase “strap on,” in a queer/kink context, has an implied object. Well, it’s sort of the same thing with the adjective version. “Strap-on” is a modifier to the same implied noun that was the implied object of the verbal phrase. So in the above example, it’s “dildo.” Make sense? (So, in line with these rules, “motherfucking” as an adjective really ought to be “mother-fucking,” and why it isn’t is something I’ll never understand. But I digress.)

Now, through lots of use, “strap-on” has acquired nominal function of its own (as has, for example “follow-up”: “let’s schedule a follow-up for next week”) and doesn’t even need a separate noun to modify. It speaks for itself. But grammatically speaking, it follows the rules of an adjectival phrase.

Okay, grammar lesson’s over. Questions? ;)

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This post, “strapon,” “strap on” or “strap-on”?: a grammatical elucidation, originally appeared on alphafemme on February 12, 2010.