Greg Norman shanked his Shiraz in the bushes

The Queen hath bestowed upon this humble knave the honor of a blogger "reflections" award. Given this:

This award should make you reflect on five bloggers who have been an encouragement, a source of love, impacted you in some way, and have been a Godly example to you. Five Bloggers who when you reflect on them you get a sense of pride and joy . . . of knowing them and being blessed by them.

I was pretty sure I was getting punk'd, but that goofy, jackass motherfucker on MTV who married the old babe didn't show up all day. There was a point late this evening that a string of slightly suspicious circumstances led to my hanging out in the parking lot of Wal-Mart with both my older children, who I rarely see, anymore. One minute I was driving home, alone and the next, I'm smoking in Wal-Mart’s parking lot, listening to rap music with my two kids and a half-dozen other teenagers. It was the perfect, sort of quirky time to get car-jacked, arrested for shop-lifting, or wrongly outed as a 16 yr old dork who poses as a forty-something, blogging pirate, DOROTHY and BLONDIE...

Nothing happened, so I left. I drove home and drank a bottle of my new, favorite wine-Amerone, from Carousel Winery at South Range, deep in the verdant heart of Midwestern wine country. I drank this bottle on advise of the good Queen who suggested I needed a little drunk blogging. Slightly drunk with a Flexeril kicker will have to do. After the Amerone, I cracked a Greg Norman Shiraz. I love a good Shiraz. Australian-grown Syrah grape (a very old grape, around since Roman times), it tends to be bolder, spicier than it's French, or Western American cousins and a good romp with a strong, red meat. Not this time. Reminiscent of bloody piss from a rat with terminal bladder cancer. Greg needs to stay the fucking course and stay on the fucking course, if you know what I mean. In fact, so bad, I just dared a shot of butterscotch schnapps to clear my palate-how nasty is that?

Anyway, the Queen, god love her, received and then nominated me for this award thingy and I was going to make a list, but you know what? Every blogger I read has in some way impacted my life. I love to read-it’s an important part of my life and who I am. If someone’s on my blogroll, I pretty much read every post and stop by at least once a day. Nearly everyone on my blogroll, writes a personal account of what’s going on their lives, what brings them joy, pisses them off, or amazes them.

After a while, this somewhat personal view has to impact you in some way, probably even if you don’t realize it, but I do realize it. Over the last year that I’ve been blogging and reading, I’ve met so many people who’ve opened my eyes to so many new things that I really don’t know where to start. Ways of looking at issues, views of a life I would otherwise never see, lessons learned and my god, the humor. You people out there are some of the funniest people I have ever come across, seriously. You all make me laugh, cry, scream and swear, moan and groan and sit in contemplative silence, every damn day

But at the end of the day, the single, biggest impact a blogger has had on my life had to be when I received two bottles of wine, complete with straws from the Queen. Both impacted me quite nicely, thanks!