My Very First Contest for Readers

Ever since I posted about the new blog features I've had a few interesting things happen.  First of all, my 10-year high school reunion post shot up from #10 to #1 in popularity.  That was strange...  The power of suggestion.  Let's see if I can get you to put my first post from England ever on the charts.  

Secondly, my sister had this to say on my Facebook wall today: 

While looking at your blog history that you set up it has been quite interesting to "hear" your writing voice go from, Californian, to a southern accent, and now to a British one. Will the real Nicole Sampley please stand up???? :)

Amy agreed in a comment below hers, and Allison had the nerve to "Like"!  What the heck?  Is it annoying?  It's not like I'm trying to imitate an English person when I write.  My mom used to (badly) absorb foreign people's accents when talking to them, especially on the phone with Romanians.  I'll blame her!  

However, I can trace this habit through my whole life.  It's kind of a mishmash of every one else's accents I started out poking fun at my whole life, starting with Kelee's "flag, bag, tag" Seattle to Lorena's "Oh my god, the poor cat!" Colombia to Kristin's "car, mom, class" Michigan to Katie's "say 'bye bye bye' Oliver" and "I just can't live without my channels" Birmingham (Alabama, not England) to Otha Lee's "That's one of them crazy bikes!" deep South to the classic English "shocking" (said with a heavy dose of irony, of course) and "a total nightmare" and "quite right."

Just let me know if it's coming off as, well, I'm-sooo-English-now-I-just-can't-help-it-after-only-six-weeks-here.

Lastly, I've had more than a few blogstalkers confess to reading and not commenting - from India to Ireland and lots of places in between.  It turns out we many of us have some great memories and/or bloggy friends in common.  Come on Halifax, Fort Meyers, Oakland, Fresno, Van Nuys, and Hendersonville (and anyone else who's been on the blog in the last four hours of this writing).  It's your turn to 'fess up!  You too Atlanta!  You too Bakersfield!  I taught you how to comment.  I don't care if you're a complete stranger.  DO IT!

What do I have to do?  Tap dance?  Stand on my head?  Give you a prize?  Hm... a prize... everyone likes prizes...

In fact, if you've commented from my original "WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE?" post last Thursday until Friday morning of this week (since I'm 8 hours ahead of the West coast, I'll give you guys the rest of Thursday to enter while I'm sleeping), I'll put your name into a little top hat and I'll draw a winner on Friday afternoon.  I'll mail you, O Lucky Winner, a treasure from England, no matter where in the world you are.  Best of luck.  

In an effort to not be too English, I chose a picture from Google images of "prizes" that had words in Arabic.  Salaam.