The Gift of Schmooze

As regular readers may remember, I try -- hard -- not to pay attention to all the awards floating around the 'sphere, so as not to get myself all bent out of shape, what with my natural competitiveness. Hell, when I was growing up my sibs and I could make a contest out of breathing! However when I first saw this one making the rounds, I confess I craved it.

I admit that in real life I think of myself as the ultimate schmoozer. I can walk into a room with 500 strangers and strike up a conversation in five minutes. I believe I come by this skill honestly; my father can do it in two minutes (competitive? Us? Nah.) To be fair, though, I've noticed this seems to be a trait inherent to family docs. The last ten times I've walked into a room with 500 strangers, they've been FPs; either at a conference or Board re-cert.

So when I saw the Schmooze award passing around, I wondered if anyone would consider me a good schmoozer.

Many thanks to Dr. K, of Frank's Mirror fame, for tagging me with the Power of Schmooze; cool graphic and all:
I know the rules are to tag five more people, adding a paragraph of nice things about them. I'm going to break my rule (about not tagging people) just this once. I checked as best I could to make sure none of the following had already been tagged, which frankly surprised me; they're among the best:

Kim at Emergiblog. Talk about defining "schmooze".

The Blog That Ate Manhattan: medicine and food are two of the most universal schmoozing topics in existence. Besides, she comes around regularly and leaves the greatest comments.

Susan Palwick at Rickety Contrivances of Doing Good: I feel like I know her from her recent pictures of her family visit. Her posts are thought provoking, and eminently schmooze-worthy.

MedBlog Addict: Wracked with insecurity, who else garners half a dozen comments on a post that says, "I'll be posting soon." She's the schmoozer who doesn't even realize it.

Lynn Price of Is it Friday Yet? She may not blog as often as some, but she comments on every post she reads. I'm actually considering asking her -- an actual professional acquiring EDITOR for chrissakes -- to beta-read my novel when it's done. Now *that's* the power of Schmooze.