Contests, Winners, and Shameless Plugs

First, check out this great contest posted by Amanda over at Ramblings of a Drifting Mind! She's celebrating her 100th, 125th,and 150th followers, plus her 21st birthday to boot!

Also, Justine Dell is having an amazing contest to celebrate her 250th follower, and some of the prizes include: a query critique, a 3 chapter line edit, and a full MS copy edit!! (Seriously people, do you know how much a full MS copy edit costs? Go enter RIGHT NOW!)

Next, WINNERS! After putting your story suggestions for my scar to the test, it turned out to be a close race... but only one caused a friend I haven't seen in a while to get ginger ale up her nose. This was the scenario:
Friend,"Hey, what happened to your hand??" (takes a sip of ginger ale)
Me, "Zombie."
Friend, (snorting laugh) "Ow..."
Me, "Yah, it hurt"
Friend, "No, I totally got ginger ale up my nose-- it hurts!"

So congrats to VALERIE GEARY!
Email me and we'll figure out the prize delivery :-)


And last, I am shamelessy plugging my sister's blog, which is made of AWESOME, particularly if you love Japan.
She regularly posts about life in Japan, from festivals and tradition to raising three kids there, and she has added a couple new features that I love:
"Monday Manglish", in which she outs Japan for its bizarre and unintentionally hilarious usage of english...
and Friday Field Notes, in which she posts photos of interesting bits of nature she has seen whilst walking the kids to school. She started this feature at the request of our mother. Our family, you see, is genetically inclined to notice every plant and bird and living creature within a 50 foot radius, and then rush home to look it up in a book.

We may or may not have been guilty of nearly crashing the car over a clump of daylillies on the side of the road...

But I digress-- go check out my sister's blog and follow her for some cool insights into Japan!

A Tale of Two Sisters

Some of you already know that my sister lives in Japan, but despite that distance, we are as close as two sisters could possibly be. We are the best of best friends, and to my memory, have been ever since I was in 6th grade and she was in 9th. Amy stuck up for me when one of her school friends was being a bit mean (I don't even remember what happened-- just that she pretty much told her friend to shove it.), and we've never had a cross word since.

We're also constantly discovering that we share secret obsessions (see my posts and our comments on Johnny Weir and Particle Physics for proof of random things we obsess about).

So if you've ever wondered what life in the Land of the Rising Sun is like (don't miss the bust-a-gut mangled English!), how to get started with origami anyone can do, or even how they get kids to eat spinach in Japan, pop on over and see her new blog: YokohamaMama !
I also have a link to it in my sidebar.

And don't forget to scroll down for pictures of 4-year-olds dressed up with sushi hats, singing a sushi song... it's seriously cute overload.
But I think my sister's three kids are cute overload too :-)