It’d been a while since I had been nominated for a blogging award. As my regular readers know, I’m not the biggest fan of these pixilated pieces of chain mail, and quite mercilessly lampooned blogging awards in my Sparky inspired post last month. But since it’s been a few months, and the latest award I was nominated for fits in so well with my topic of the weekend, I figured what the heck! I’ll officially accept this nod!
Julie from the blog Sow, Sew, So recently received the Shine On Award, and was kind enough to include my humble blog in her list of nominees! I’d like to take the time to thank Julie for the honor. I have known of this award’s existence for a while now, but this was my first shot at accepting it. The Shine On Award is great visual eye candy, and of course, it is cute… and you know how I feel about that now!
The Shine On Award, like so many of its cousins out there, requires the awardee to list a bunch of random personal facts about themselves….. grumble. I’ve told plenty about myself over the course of the last 370+ posts, and while there’s still much more to reveal, that should come naturally with the subject of each post! So in lieu of more personal facts, I’m going to do what I do best…. get creative!
Here are 10 true facts about 10 of my characters here at The Nest!
1. While Evil Squirrel is a common grey squirrel, his mother was a brown squirrel. He must take after his father.
You’ve embarrassed the family enough with your stupid blog, young man!!!
2. MBRS was the first one of my characters to sport the signature hip tattoos I give almost all of my creations.
Who says you can’t do ink on fur?
3. Angel Squirrel originally had silver colored hair rather than her current light blue.
Don’t get mad, MBRS. She looks like she’s old enough to be ES’s grandma.
4. I offered my message board friend who inspired Buster the chance to name my possum character. Buster was one of two possible names she came up with. The other was Lil Shithead.
Call me anything except late to dinner! BURP!
5. If you think the US government fighting over its budget is a bad thing, Rainbow Donkey was a long forgotten character of mine who I hadn’t drawn in almost 2 years until the federal employee furloughs of April 2011 caused me to track down a little used, expendable character for an relevant avatar image. He never went back into the dustbin of ES history and could you imagine my blog without him?
And if you ever wondered why this image I used from time to time was titled “furlough”… now you know!
6. The pendant around Hooly’s neck has an “H” on it for her name, but when I first started drawing her, it read “TEP” after a Tom (Earl) Petty guitar pick Hooly’s inspiration used to use as an avatar on my message board. I changed it after she had broken up with her then boyfriend because it reminded her of him.
Consider yourself lucky. Squirrel!
7. My cat Ody was named after my character Odyssey due to their similar markings. Some people think it was the other way around, but no, I really did name a pet after one of my creations.
Back off, Skunkbitch! No cat would want to be named after you!
8. Erin is the only one of my characters who was both inspired by, and named after a real person.
Famous for being an 8 year old….
9. Hottie the skunk was not named so because she was very attractive (not that she isn’t), but rather Hottie was a nickname from derived from her WWTBAM message board handle “Hotseat or Bust!”
Ain’t no stopping me now…
10. The squirrel pup Sulphur was named after the Oklahoma city of the same name.
No humor points necessary, this is just one of my better Sully pics.
And now for some blogs to nominate. Rather than beat myself up trying to pick from my list of followers, I decided to make it easy on myself and simply nominate everyone who commented on Part I of my essay on cuteness yesterday! So the following bloggers are my official nominees for the Shine On Award!
Congrats to the lucky winners, and wear your Shine On Award proudly!
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
Dude, are you KIDDING? No, of course you’re not. 🙂 Wow, I don’t know what to say…
No need to say anything! That smile on your gravatar says it all! 😉
Yeah, it says, “I’m half dead and the other half ain’t lookin’ too good either.” I’m going to try to get to this after lunch – I’m afraid if I wait until tomorrow I’ll be so pissed off at the Toad that I won’t be capable.
🙂 Thank you, ES!
I think, while Buster was the right name to go with, Lil Shithead really has a certain ring to it!
Yeah, it would have really been such an adorable name!
Congrats my friend! XOXO – Bacon
Thanks Bacon!
Thanks. In December, I plan to have a super-jumbo-mega-amazing post when I finally acknowledge all of these. (Or at least those that I can remember!) And I didn’t realize the squirrels and friends had such a backstory.
Oooh, that’s the way to do it!
Everything has a backstory, and since VH-1 won’t do a Behind the Cartoons on my characters, I’ll just have to drop these little tidbits myself every so often….
I am on top of the list!! Thank you ES.
Yes! Your reward for replying first…. er, being such a special friend!!! 😉
I’m special huh? Neat-o. 😉
That’s such a cool idea to write facts about your squirrel gang for an award! It was great to learn some more about them 🙂
They all have fascinating backstories. The best thing about my whole series is how it developed completely organically. One thing led to another thing which inspired something else which cause me to draw such and such, etc. I didn’t just one day decide I was going to create a gang of squirrels and sat down to force my character’s traits. The latter always leads to less interesting results….
What a fun post and thank you for nominating me. I accept with relish.
Aunt Sharon. 🙂
With relish, huh? Are you sure you wouldn’t like some mustard with that? 😉