Oklahoma Blog Awards Final Ballot = UP. Plus, a Recap.

Hey, Tulsa bloggers. Did you know the final ballot for the 2009 Oklahoma Blog Awards has been posted? It's true.

Go check it out right now - dozens of deserving bloggers have been nominated, including several from the Tulsa area (especially in the Best Tulsa Blog category, duh). If you're an Oklahoma blogger, be sure to cast your last and final ballot before this Sunday, Feb. 14. 

See? Valentine's Day doesn't have to be about cheap candy and overpriced flowers. It can also be about blogger love. Which is totally legal, I assure you.

I can't go any further without getting a little sappy for a minute here. I'm overwhelmed that enough of my peers in blogging enjoy this silly morass of a Web site enough to nominate me in not just one category of the 2009 Oklahoma Blog Awards, but in three. As in one, two and...three.

I'm up against some seriously kick-ass blogs in each category in which TDT was nominated - Best Culture Blog (nominated for the third year in a row - yeah, boi), Best Representation of Oklahoma and Best Tulsa Blog - so to even be considered on par with these folks is, I feel, an award in itself.

If you're an Oklahoma blogger and you want to vote for me in any of the three categories in which my blog was nominated, I won't mind. In fact, you don't even have to ask me for permission. You can just go right on ahead and do it, and we'll both be happy as clams.

Not that I know anything about clams or their happiness. I've lived in a landlocked state for the past 26 years, after all. They could be really depressed, for all I know.

Changing topics somewhat: Remember that party of Tulsa-area bloggers that went on like Donkey Kong last week? At Joe Momma's downtown? The one to which more than 50 people came? Yes! That one. I'm so glad you remember. 

Lots of lovely, sunshiny people showed up. As one of my Twitter/blogger buddies observed, Tulsa bloggers aren't a half-bad looking group. I'd have to agree. 

Look at this mom and her baby girl, for example. That mom, she's Mandy Vavrinak. Mandy's a blogger, sure, but she's also one of Tulsa's PR mavens. That baby girl is...well, let's just say she's a womb-flip inducing, lovable lump of delicious baby goodness. 

Oh, Baby V. I'm sorry, but it's really best if we don't see each other again for awhile. It's not you - it's me. It's me and my baby fever, despite the fact that my husband is now a full-time student and I'm still a full-time blogger/freelance writer/columnist/scarf knitter/mom. All six jobs really do a great job of lining the ol' 401(k) coffer, let me just tell you.  

That hiding in the corner is Batesline blogger Michael Bates. He has some seriously gorgeous children of his own - three of them, if you can believe it. 

We bloggers, we make the pretty babies.  

There's Tulsa Project writer Michael Champlin and Colleen McCarty, who just last weekend launched her new music blog, Independent Cause. Stop by and check it out. You'll be glad you did. 

Thanks again to Michael, as well as to Brett and Kate from The Art of Manliness, for helping me to organize the first-in-a-long-time Tulsa Blogger Meetup. Your help was more valuable to me than a secret  loaf of buttery cinnamon bread hidden in my closet during my "vegan" phase in high school. 

Yeah. That actually happened.

Those of you who showed up to the event will remember that I asked you to think about what you'd like to get out of a regularly meeting group of Tulsa-area bloggers. What sounds good to you - a monthly, casual meet-up? A formal association? A group sky dive? A group run to Canada for discount prescription drugs? You tell me. Feel free to send me your thoughts on this via e-mail, or post them in the comments section below. 

Stay tuned for news about the next Tulsa Bloggers Meetup. Yes, it's coming. Your wildest bloggy dreams are coming true.