… That is the sound that disturbed the slumber of many a Gutenberg student (and no doubt a few people in the southern hemisphere) last night when I, at approximately 10:30 pm, discovered that my blog was a finalist for Best Teen Weblog in the 2007 Bloggies.

A. FINALIST. FOR. BEST. TEEN. WEBLOG.

To the people who nominated Lylium.org, and the people who have already emailed me to let me know that they decided to vote for it: Thank you, friends. You have no idea how much joy it brings me to know that enough people have enjoyed this blog to get it nominated in the Bloggies. I appreciate your support more than you know.

To every single person who is reading this post: GO VOTE. And I don’t necessarily mean you have to vote for ME… I highly encourage you to check out all the other finalists, as there is apparently some serious teen talent on the net. But at the very least, vote for SOMEONE!

Good luck everyone… and thank you again for the honour.

Let me tell you a little story.

Approximately twelve months ago, I was surfing the internet and discovered a little thing called the Bloggies—awards for noteworthy achievements in blogging over the past year. I also happened to notice that they had just introduced a brand new category for their blog awards: “Best Teen Weblog.” I read those words and a little voice inside of me said “You want to win that.”

And, so help me, I did want to.

At the time, I was already blogging, but only on a lonely little blogspot blog that almost nobody knew about. I decided it was time to get serious.

I registered my domain name. I installed Wordpress. I designed my blog’s template. This was going to be my ticket to success. I would win Best Teen Weblog next year at the Bloggies!

Of course, over the year, my blog became much more to me than an attempt at a Bloggie award. In fact, it was not long after I began writing that I forgot about that goal entirely.

Until now.

You see, it’s that time of year again. And now, right now, right this very minute, and every minute until 7pm (Pacific) Wednesday, January 10 (which is probably today by the time most of you are reading this), the Bloggies are accepting nominations.

And so, while I do not want to manipulate you or force you to do anything, if you have enjoyed reading this blog and feel it is worthy, I would heartily appreciate your nomination.

These are the categories for which Lylium.org is eligible (although certainly not necessarily worthy ):

• Best American Weblog
• Best Photography of a Weblog
• Best Teen Weblog
• Most Humorous Weblog
• Best Writing of a Weblog
• Best-designed Weblog
• Best New Weblog
• Weblog of the Year (hahahaha)

Don’t feel like you have to nominate Lylium.org for anything if you do not want to. But if you do have the urge to put in your nominations for the Bloggies, you can do that here.

Oh, and… in spite of my little “story,” I hope it is clear that neither is this blog solely an attempt to win awards, nor will I be crushed if it does not win any. And, although it would be fun to be nominated for best teen weblog, I am not silly enough to assume that mine is the best on the web. This site is a great place to start if you are looking for some other serious teen bloggers.

/Plea.

By now, most of you have figured out why, for the last month, I broke my usual blogging pattern and posted EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. But in case you haven’t heard, I will explain.

In the month of November, I participated in NaBloPoMo, or “National Blog Posting Month.”

I know this may have seemed like a poor choice, considering how swamped I was feeling by schoolwork, but as November approached I decided to join for a number of reasons. One, I just really wanted to blog more. I felt like a lot of things were happening that I never recorded anywhere, and that I would eventually forget about entirely. Two, I really wanted to prove to myself that I could actually do something… that I could make a commitment like that to myself and actually stick it out.

I also decided, as I was beginning this challenge, that I wouldn’t tell y’all about it—at least not right away. I have a bad habit of announcing things that I’m going to do and then not doing them. So, here I am, not telling you that I’m going to do NaBloPoMo, but that I did it. Ever so much more satisfying.

So, I did it, but was it a success? I’m not exactly sure. This challenge surprised me in a lot of ways. I think the easiest way to debrief will be a simple list of Pros and Cons:

Pros:

• I wrote every day. I really did have to exercise the discipline that I talked about above.
• Readers had fresh content every single day.
• I recorded a lot of little moments that I would have forgotten about otherwise.
• I gained new readers. I’ve noticed several new faces around, probably people who found me through the NaBloPoMo Randomizer. I hope you stick around, folks!

Cons:

• I wrote every day. It was not very many days into November before blogging started to feel like a real chore.
• Readers had fresh content every single day. Honestly, I think this was probably a little overwhelming. Because I have so little time to read blogs, I usually prefer when they update every couple of days. But maybe that’s just me.
• My posts dropped in quality. Often I had to write my posts in the ten minutes before I went to bed, and usually I was grasping at straws to find topics. All of this made me feel like I was giving you scribbles instead of finished paintings.
• Readers (understandably) left fewer comments because there was less time to digest each individual post.
• The posts in turn seemed to lose a little bit of their unique identity, becoming instead “part of NaBloPoMo.”

Oh, I forgot one big “Pro”: I captured one month of my first quarter at College in a time capsule. I can only imagine what it will be like to look at this two, three, twenty years down the road.
All in all, I think it was a good experience.

But I’m sure as heck not doing it in December.

In fact, starting tonight, I am taking a week-long hiatus from the internet. Finals are next week, and in order to help me concentrate, I will not be checking my bloglines feeds, checking MySpace or Facebook, surfing the web, or getting on at all except to check my email. I’m already starting to feel a little bit twitchy from withdrawal, but I think it will be good for me.

See you next week.

… Not really. But I did order a Macbook Pro!

After months of wondering and hinting, I finally bit the bullet.

But now I need your help. Yes, you—all you staunch Mac users out there, even if you have never commented on this site before or have just stumbled on it by accident. You see, this is my very first Mac of my own. And while, on the one hand, I am ridiculously excited about it, on the other hand there is a small part of me that is beginning to have a panic attack because this is where the rubber meets the road.

I’ve been trying to convince myself and my parents and my friends for ages that I want a Mac, that I need a Mac, that I cannot possibly be happy and fulfilled in my computing life without a Mac! So naturally, now that I’ve hit that “Place Order” button and watched all of my money fly out the window, I’m apprehensive; my worst fear is that it will arrive and it will be gorgeous and I will open it up and turn it on and it will be SO PRETTY and then I will go… “Now what?”

So this is where you come in. The Macbook Pro is scheduled to arrive around September 12th, which is, coincidentally, my birthday. Before then, I need to harness your collective Mac wisdom. I need to know what to do and setup and download to feel at home in my new computer. I want to know it inside and out. What are the apps or widgets that you can’t live without? What are some of the most fun and useful features built into OS X that I may not know about? How do you even use OS X, anyway?

I am not a novice computer user, by any means. I am not even completely clueless about Macs, as I have been reading The Unofficial Apple Weblog and other Mac-related blogs for quite some time. But I would really love some tips and instructions to make my transition from Windows to Mac as smooth as possible. Thank you in advance!

P.S. Because we qualify for the educational discount from Apple, I was also able to get a free 2 GB iPod Nano with my laptop! That is pretty exciting too, as I have never owned an iPod.

P.P.S. That Macbook Pro graphic up there is Apple’s, not mine. It belongs to Apple. Apple has the rights to it. Therefore Apple would be within its rights to come hunt me down and shoot me for using its graphic on my website. Don’t do it, Apple, it’s free advertising!