Us procrastinators will unite--one of these days...

In the meantime, I have some catching up to do: I'm part of a fun tag game, and I've received the Brilliante award from 3 different places and still haven't posted it. Now I'm procrastinating from studying for my big exam, however, so now I'm miraculously finding time for everything but that .

First, the tag game from BeadedTail: I get to name 5 unusual things about me, and tag 5 other people. Rather than pick people to tag, I'll let you choose--if you want to play, leave a comment and I'll add a link to you here.

Oddity #1: My middle name is Ryan, a "boy's" name, but I went by that name until I was 10 and got sick of being teased all the time (I switched to an abbreviated form of my first name instead). Now I kind of miss "Ryan" though, so I use variations of it for internet aliases and pseudonyms all the time--for example, I'm "Rya" or "Ryarianne" most places online.

Oddity #2: I'm unbelievably frightened of spiders but I love snakes. Go figure.

Oddity #3: My fear of spiders actually causes me to catch and release them when I find them inside, rather than kill them, because I've convinced myself that if i don't hurt them they won't hurt me.

Oddity #4: I'm enrolled in a PhD program in (basically) writing, yet I feel far more comfortable talking about intellectual ideas than writing about them.

Oddity #5: I love the smell of coffee but absolutely hate the taste of it. I drink ginger or licorice tea instead (which I guess should count as an additional oddity, since I don't know anyone else who likes licorice tea).

Second, the Brilliante award. BeadedTail, Miz Allie Cat, and TeamSquidEtsy were all kind enough to give me this award. Since I just nominated 7 blogs for my cat award the other day I'm not going to nominate any more at this time (plus it seems everyone I read has already gotten this, and it irks my self-centered creative side to be passe--lol). However, I am very grateful to be the lucky recipient of this award--thank you so much!