Sarah Glassmeyer, Recipient of Two Very Prestigious LLB 2011 Awards

In the spirit of "Best 2011 'Something' Awards," LLB is delighted to announce that Sarah Glassmeyer's has been awarded LLB's 2011 Best Recap of the Year Blog Post again. Actually we didn't have an official LLB award last year, so "again" means she has been retroactively awarded LLB's 2010 Best Annual Recap of the Year Blog Post. You can read Sarah's awarding winning 2011 post at Man Plans. God Laughs. 2011 in Review. It starts off with the following:

Hey, remember last year at this time when I said that I wanted to have a really boring 2011 and not do anything too “interesting.” ... Um. Yeah. That didn’t quite happen." The past year hasn’t been a bad one by any stretch of the imagination.  Actually, it’s been quite good and huge improvement over 2010.  2011 ain’t been boring, that’s for darn sure. ... I tried to be boring.  I really did. 

Sarah's retroactively awarded LLB 2010 Best Recap of the Year Blog Post was 2010 Was an Interesting Year. LLB's commentary at 'Tis the Season for Year in Review Blog Posts stated

[Sarah's] goal for 2011 is to have "a more boring year." I doubt she will achieve that goal. In fact, who would want that for Sarah! Continue to stretch and stay true to yourself is a far better goal for 2011.

Well, Sarah certainly stayed true to herself in 2011. As for the coming year, she writes

So, 2012?  Who knows. I think it’s clear that I suck at making predictions or plans.  And another thing I’ve learned this year is that sometimes the big things don’t really appear to be big at the time – and good things happen completely randomly and without any expectation of it at all.  So I guess my only plan for 2012 is to be open to possibility.

Once again, I believe that means Sarah will continue to stretch and stay true to herself in 2012. That's a good thing.

LLB's Best 2011 Twitter Stream. In the ad hoc created LLB category for Twitter, Sarah is hereby awarded LLB's Best 2011 Twitter Stream. While Twitter has become an avenue for providing a heads-up current awareness function by law librarians who use Twitter for this purpose, in addition to her current awareness tweets, Sarah's "day-in-the-life of a newbie Chicagoan" tweets deserve this "very prestigious" LLB recognition.

Granted this is a very idiosyncratic award because the co-editors of LLB are two born and breed and vintage Chicagoans;  Mark Giangrande works in Chicago at DePaul Law, and yours truly is a "Chicagoland" ex-pat. In my case, Sarah's "I live in Chicago now" tweets have been a delight to read. Hence the award. I don't think Sarah would object to my characterization of them as "farm grrrrrl, meets big city."

Just like all contributors to LLB are not censored and are free to post whatever they want (e.g., "Joe (or Mark), you recent ignorant SOB post...," (ditto for comments posts) LLB "awards" do not go through a screening process. That means Mark and any of our LLB contributing editors are free to honor anyone for anything by way of an "official LLB award" for 2011. Hell, I didn't even contact Mark to see if he was OK with with the above awards!

In this case, the only "swag" that comes with the above-announced LLB awards is a personal promise to buy Sarah an Al's Italian Beef sandwich the next time I am in my hometown or the next time Sarah and Mark hook up. Sarah works on the west end of downtown Chicago aka the Loop. Mark on the east end of the Loop (read Al's is nearby DePaul Law, Sarah). I have not checked with Mark but I believe he would be willing to do his "duty" as LLB co-editor to pick up the tab for an Al's Italian Beef.

If I ever get back up to Sweet Home, Chicago, the first Al's Italian Beef is on me, Sarah. Alas that may not be until 2016 when AALL conducts its always interesting annual convention in Chicago. Pause .... I'm doing the math... . OK, I will be on the verge of retirement age, assuming the Blog Widow ever allows me to retire. You better remind me, Sarah. [JH]

Editor's Note: Well, perhaps you can't read Sarah's posts. They were online. Now they are not. "Something isn't quite right here ... This site has been suspended." According to a Dec. 27th tweet, Sarah is probably in Canada now and is going to be offline most of the week.