Personal Digest Saturday: May 2 – May 8

Life news this week: 

• Well, the award I won got announced: I'm the Silver Medalist for the IPPY Award in the Sexuality/Relationships category.
  
• I also got a notification that I have been chosen as the actual winner in another book recognition award thing, but I'll wait until that's officially announced to tell you about that!
  
• AND I was in US News and World Report giving an interview about asexuality. It turned out pretty good--very basic interview, but some really good choices were made in how to present the information.
  
• Had my mommy over on Saturday and she brought me luggage she'd bought me for my New York trip (it's super cute) and a nice dress I can wear!!! It fits me really well and looks nice.
  
• I made a music video on Sunday! It's an art form I'd admired for years called AMVs (if you don't know what that is); they're fan-made videos of animation clips set to a song. I got the idea because the song I picked for my karaoke this week made me think of a couple of Steven Universe characters and their sad situation, so I made a video to the same song. I was all happy about it but I guess most of the people who watched it thought it was kinda cheesy. :) Yep, it's official, I love this show too much.
  
• Decided finally that I AM going to the Asexuality Conference in Toronto in June, and I went ahead and registered for it, plus volunteered to run a workshop about handling criticism. My brother-in-law is a great person because he is giving me his frequent flyer miles. :D
  
• Got to have a nice chat with Meg on the phone on Monday so that was nice!
  
• Jeaux Day involved a restaurant called Roman Forum where I had a peculiar (and tasty) dish of . . . spaghetti cakes. And fries. I got so full Jeaux had to help finish my fries! Then we went shopping for comics because we are nerds. At my house we listened to Night Vale and I showed him my music video and he liked it.
  
• Thursday was book club and we discusses our monthly read, which was The Appeal by John Grisham. The opinions were split. I liked the book a lot. We ate at Gandolfo's and I got mad because they had a sign that said "Eat BACON because broccoli is for sissies." Really, we're using gendered insults to shame people about what food they eat? Ughhhhh.

Places featured:

• Asexuality: The Invisible Orientation?: My interview in US News and World Report.
  
• IPPY Awards: I'm listed as a Silver Medalist in Sexuality/Relationships.
  
• Link Love: Rebekka K. Steg listed my Everyday Feminism article under "Equality" in a link roundup.
  
• The Asexual Agenda included one of my blog posts and my US News interview in their linkspam this week.

Reading progress:

• Completed reading: Redefining Realness by Janet Mock. Four-star review.
• Currently reading: Fun Home by Alison Bechdel.

New singing performances:

Here I'm singing "Vanilla Twilight" by Owl City. You can kinda tell I was thinking about some stuff that led to me making the music video I made later. ;)


 
New drawings:

Webcomic Negative One Issue 0521: "There Was Boys."






New videos:



Pearlescent Twilight: The music video I made. :)


New photos:  

I get a donut of some sort for winning awards. This is my custard longjohn for the IPPY.

Trying on my mom's dress.

The distasteful sign that angered me at the restaurant after book club this week. Yargh.

Social media counts: YouTube subscribers: 4,565 for swankivy (30 new this week), 460 for JulieSondra (6 new). Twitter followers: 644 for swankivy (3 new), 944 for JulieSondra (12 new). Facebook: 278 friends (no change) and 162 followers (1 new) for swankivy, 555 likes for JulieSondra (3 new), 54 likes for Negative One (no change), 104 likes for So You Write (no change). Tumblr followers: 1,981 (32 new).