The Thanksgiving Weekend Trifecta

Part I: Request For Bids

Description of Work:

I: A Masthead for this blog, The Life & Times of michael5000, created to the following specifications:

1) The Masthead must clearly show the blog's name.
2) The Masthead may, if desired, incorporate the mediaeval illustration "The Chariot of Venus," which can be found at:
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:The_Chariot_of_Venus_p00039.jpg.
3) The Masthead may, if desired, incorporate one or more interobangs.
4) The Masthead should be approximately 900 pixels wide. It may be of any height. It should be in a standard .jpg format.
5) The Masthead should convey such L&TM5K blog values as whimsy, an appreciation of art and/or history, cheerfulness, eclecticism, and dorkyness.

II: A Favicon coordinated to the Masthead, exactly 16 x 16 pixels in size.

III (optional): A "Christmas Masthead" identical to the above Masthead, but ringed with Christmas lights and/or otherwise modified with whimsical holiday decor.


Bidding

A Bid for this project shall consist of two parts.

I) Content. In this section of the bid, the bidder should either

1) indicate a general plan or "vision" of their intended masthead, or:
2) mock up a rough draft or, what the heck, a final draft of the masthead, or:
3) make a vague promise to work on the masthead at some point in the future.

II) Compensation/Budget. In this section, the bidder should indicate how he or she expects to be compensated for his or her efforts. Bids may include, but are not limited to, any of the following forms of compensation:

1) lavish thanks
2) extremely flattering posts profiling the bidder
3) cookies
4) lap blankets made from 100% recycled materials
5) honorary titles
6) indulgences
7) assurances of future comments on the bidder's blog
8) labor
9) extremely modest amounts of money

Bids may be sent to M5KDecathlon[at]gmail.com. All submitted materials become the property of me, michael5000. Bring it, suckas.

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Part II: Supplemental Reader-Request Quiz

By actual reader request, more or less, it's another non-canonical L&TM5K Quiz!

Countries of Africa: Identify 'em!

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8.

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Part III: Michael Still Reads the Bible

Over at MRtB, I've closed up shop for the annual Winter Sabbatical after finishing up the books of Chronicles. I'll start it back up again sometime in January, with Ezra.

In two and a half years, I've finished 14 of the Bible's 66 books. That puts me only a woeful 21.2% of the way in. In chapters, though, I've finished 403 of 1189, which is a little more than a third of the way through (33.9%). My favorite measure is verses; having completed a whopping 12017 verses, I'm 38.6% of the way through the 31102-verse Bible. At this year's pace, I will wrap up in Summer 2011.

Those of you who have always wanted to go on a Bible-reading lag -- and who among us hasn't? -- I hardly need say that the next two months would be a perfect time for you to jump in and catch up with me. It shouldn't be too hard if you don't make my mistake and try to write down your thoughts about what you're reading. Just make it to Chronicles, and then from there we can read the read together, nice and slow! K? K.

Happy Thanksgiving Weekend.