Following a 3 week absence, you may have thought that I had gained so much wealth and fame from my brief blogging career that I retired with my blogging riches never to be seen again…

Ummm – unfortunately – no.

My absence can be partially explained by my recent return from an awesome experience volunteering in South Africa for almost 2 weeks, and following the Thanksgiving holiday, I’ll crank the blogging wheel up and get back to regular posting. So hang in there with me!

While I was unplugged (yep – no cell phone or laptop for 9 days), it seems that many of my fellow bloggers engaged in a bit of “blog tag”, and the lovely and talented Jessica Lee tagged me to share 7 random facts about myself.

Actually, the tag creates a great opportunity to make you aware of Jessica’s cool new blog! She’s a fellow Fistful of Talent contributor and an HR pro with a global PR firm in Washington, DC. who is challenging many of the current norms of the human resources profession. So check out jessica lee writes!

Here’s a couple of the rules of the game:

1. Link to your original tagger, and list these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself in the post – some random, some weird.

So here they are – in no particular order:

1. I was voted as the Wittiest person in my class in junior high. When senior class superlatives came around, I came in second place. Guess I became less funny as I got older.
2. I’m deathly afraid of heights, but once did a back flip jumping out of a perfectly good airplane (because I couldn’t bear to look down). The whole experience resulted in an adrenaline rush that left me unable to speak for several minutes after landing.
3. I worked my tail off in college to accomplish a personal goal of never making less than a “B” – thinking a high GPA would help me land a great job. To this day, no potential employer has ever asked me what my GPA was. (For those playing the home game – a mix of work experience and good grades would have been better.)
4. I was paddled every year in school from 3rd grade through 10th grade – most often for talking, goofing off, and once (in high school) for climbing out the window while the teacher was out of the room to play frisbee. I was never given detention (we liked our corporal punishment in Tennessee), and my parents still don’t know. Shh…
5. A few years ago, I back-packed solo through Europe for a couple of weeks with no planned itinerary and an unlimited Eurail Pass. The. Most. Awesome. Experience. Of. My. Life. Evah.
6. The first time in my career an employee came to me with a sexual harassment claim – I was in labor. Because I was otherwise engaged, I said something sarcastic, she ran out of my office and I couldn’t get up to follow. I called work from the recovery room post-delivery to begin an investigation. (Young and eager I was back then.)
7. I’m a video game addict who is currently in recovery. I am not allowed to go near, touch or be within spitting distance of an X-Box, Play-Station, Nintendo, etc. because once I start – I cannot stop. Although a Wii keeps calling to me…

So there you go! I’m now supposed to tag seven additional bloggers, but I think most have already participated in the couple of weeks I’ve been gone, so I’ll tag my readers instead. Since I’ve shared just how strange and wonderful I really am with you, hit me in the comments with a random fact about you so I don’t feel all alone!

Stay tuned for more recruiting, coaching, talent management, etc. stuff next week…