Sandra De Freitas AND Greg Halpen tagged me in a blog post. They each listed seven unusual things about themselves, and then challenged seven other bloggers to do the same. Thank you, I think!

7 unusual things you probably don’t know about me

1. I have a new boyfriend and he’s a Captain in the Canadian Air Force Reserves.
2. I plan my meals for the whole week ahead of time.
3. My maternal grandmother was 1 of 7 children, so I have a multitude of cousins and second cousins.
4. I have lived in the same apartment for 11 years.
5. I had plastic surgery on my finger at age 9, after I closed a car door on it.
6. I love to watch gritty crime drama shows on television.
7. I still do not own a DVD player or an .MP3 player, and I only use my mobile phone to talk. [Update Feb 22/09 – I got an iPod Touch!! Great for showing my “family” photos]

And now it’s my turn. I’ve chosen 7 people whose blogs you might enjoy, and who I would like to hear 7 unusual things about (instructions for bloggers are below):

[Update December 15, 2012 – I’ve updated these website links to people’s current sites]

1. Kim Nishida
2. Alyssa Gregory
3. Karri Flatla
4. Terri Zwierzynski
5. Kathy Mallary
6. Janet Slack
7. Sarah Evans

Tag! You’re it! Here are the instructions for my fellow bloggers:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post – some random, some weird.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

I had a great time the other night at the Talk is Cheap 2.0 conference put on by staff and students of Centennial College’s Centre for Creative Communications and Social Media Group.

It was nice to hang out with June Li, Elizabeth Cockle and Barb Sawyers. I also ran into Terry Fallis, who I met, heard and blogged about at last year’s event. Congratulations to Terry for winning the 2008 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour.

I saw two sessions. In a presentation about The Ethics of Social Media PR, Dave Fleet and Michael O’Connor Clarke, both of Thornley Fallis, did a great job of explaining things like astroturfing, although in some ways the discussion raised more questions than answers. The question I was most interested in was why is it ok for professionals to have a speech written for them, but not a blog post?

Their take on that was that a blog is meant to be a two-way conversation, and if one of those two people isn’t truly present in that conversation, it’s fake. They offered the point that when someone has a speech written for them, it is still them that is standing there delivering the words.

Speaking of speechwriting, I also bumped into John Watkis at Wednesday night’s event. John (who, incidentally, attended the same high school that I did) made a big impression on me when he spoke about speechwriting at a PWAC Toronto seminar last year.

Dave and Michael suggested that if you use a ghostblogger, you could include a disclaimer explaining that someone on your staff is writing the blog, but that you review and approve every post before it goes out.

What’s the difference between ghostblogging and what I do when I edit and clean up my clients’ blog posts before they publish them? Is there a difference?

I wouldn’t be comfortable blogging “as” someone else. That would definitely feel fraudulent to me. I agree that when someone reads and comments on a blog post, they should expect to be interacting directly with the blog owner.

But ghostwriting or editing a blog post that my client then goes ahead and publishes themselves, that’s different. That’s just one of the many ways I help my clients get their own great ideas out of their heads and into writing. It means they can make use of this fantastic marketing tool even if they struggle with writing, can’t find the time do it or whether they just need some help to clarify and polish their words.

The second session I saw was also really interesting. It was called Influencing the New Influencers, and was about how to “pitch” to bloggers to get them to review, endorse or simply talk about your product or service. The panel was moderated by Keith McArthur of com.motion and featured Brenna Flynn, also of com.motion and Eden Spodek of Bargainista.

Not surprisingly, they talked a lot about the importance of building a long-term relationship (“make friends before you need them”) and also about customizing your pitch to demonstrate that you’ve read and followed the blog.

Congratulations to the Talk is Cheap Team for another great event! I’m so glad I was there.

Introducing Chyna:

This beautiful 10-year old greyhound retired from the racetrack in 2002 and was welcomed into the GINA (Greyhounds in Need of Adoption) family. In fact, one of the people who helped get her ready for her first foster home was also one of my home visit reps.

She tells me that next to all of the “big boys” that Chyna arrived with, she looked like a little china doll. She made the comment, the foster family liked it, and that’s how she got her name.

It was love at first sight for me, and I’m thrilled to be entering this new phase of my life as a “dog Mom.”

If you've been a long-time reader of my self-care and creativity articles (and thank you for that!), you may remember me posting in the Everyday Artist blog about Downtown Jam – here's a link to the original blog post.

It's a very unique music club in downtown Toronto, designed to provide musicians and singers with organized opportunities to make music together. Specifically, ROCK AND ROLL (woo hoo!), featuring a 500-song chord book with many of my favourites, including the Beatles, Joni Mitchell and others.

Well, it's taken me two years, but I finally joined! My first jam night is coming up on September 16 (I signed up to do keyboards and vocals), and I can't wait!

It' s exactly what I'm looking for right now: music-making that's just for me, but without the structure and time commitment of a choir, or the extra task of putting together my own group. And music that I truly love.