Phil Ladden . com

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Have you ever had your life turned upside down? Received news that changed everything? News that made everything you were thinking was important completely insignificant.

It’s happened to me once in my 50 years. The day after our first son was born, I was called into a small office by one of the Doctors of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit to be given the news that he had been born with Hypoplastic Left Heart, a syndrome that was terminal. Time stood still.

About five days ago, a family here in the Phoenix Valley was given some news about their five year old that has, I am sure, rocked their world. Kate McRae is the five year old daughter of Holly and Aaron McRae. This past Monday they took her Phoenix Childrens’ Hospital to have an MRI performed. A tumor was found and surgery scheduled today. They have not left the hospital since. The surgery is in process as I write this.

Check in on Kate and the family by clicking here: Pray For Kate.

Some thoughts. I pray for Kate and her parents and her brother and sister. I am mindful of the good that I too often take for granted.

I am clearly reminded what is important.

It’s Kelly! Congratulations. Kelly lost in my How well do you know me Facebook Contest with a dismal 40% correct score. She will receive a $5 Starbucks gift card. I will be sending both Julie and Kelly an email to verify your correct address.

As you can see, I used randomizer.org to “pick” my lucky loser! I entered each loser’s name in the order in which they participated in the Facebook contest followed by those that commented on the blog post. Those that did both got two entries — although that didn’t help Lisa, Nichol, or Shana.

The entry mode looked like this: Nerdo, Greg, Nichol, Nichol, Scott, Pete, Bernie, Lisa, TellurideLisa, Kimmy, Debbie, Viv, Chrystyna, Shana, SDShana, Starwoodgal.

Thanks to you all for having some fun with this. It is cool to note we had participants from all over the  world. Norway to Singapore and both East and West coasts, with the winner, Julie, being from Texas and the lucky loser from Kansas.

(Note: I just thought of this. For those that KNOW me, it is ironic that Pete rightfully finished SECOND in this contest LOL! Pete, I will buy you a round the next time we meet again.)

There seems to be a great deal of interest from people in trying to find the best questions for their Facebook How Well Do You Know Me Quiz. I was talking with a co-worker today, Chrystyna, about our questions in our quizzes. She “made” some of hers up, suggesting that she was a culinary chef and once in the Marines. They were fun, but I chose to keep mine real. I think friends taking the quiz appreciate both approaches.

In light of the interest in what are the best questions, I offer 5 suggestions for creating yours.

1. Choose topics that are from different times in your life. Pick something from childhood, the teen years, school, young adult, etc.
2. The more real, the better. Sometimes, fact is more interesting than fiction. Being genuine is really appreciated.
3. Be interesting. Include at least 3 or 4 things you have done or seen. Again, these things give your friends either a memory of you because they were there or tell others something they never knew about you.
4. Have a mix of easy and hard questions. Easy in that most will know the answer and hard as in only a select few will get it correct. You don’t want questions that no one knows. People will like your quiz better if they see that the answers are in fact known by someone in your life.
5. While the best questions are those that are revealing, use discretion! It is probably best not to divulge things related to past mistakes or bad decisions. Keep your revelations fun.

I’ve found this Facebook quiz fun to do and fun to participate in. If you have a great question you have either seen in one of the quizzes or used in your own, share it as a comment. I would say my fave question in my quiz was which song I sang in my first karaoke experience, probably because not many knew about that. No one that took my quiz were there that night. What questions would you ask?

Congratulations to everyone who commented on the previous post and all those that took the How Well Do You Know Me Quiz on my Facebook profile. You were entered in my fabulous $5 Starbucks Gift Card contest.

The Grand Prize winner is JULIE COOK, who correctly identified an astounding 60 percent correct! It must be mentioned that Julie has never met me! Julie will be the recipient of the Starbucks gift card.

As promised, here are the correct answers.

What city was I born in? Lima, Ohio. Many chose Colorado Springs probably because I lived there most of my life.

What is my middle name? Jeffrey. Ladelphia would have gotten you creative points.

What song did I choose to sing at a karaoke bar? (first time) Wonderful Tonight - Eric Clapton. Not many would know this as not many saw or heard it, thankfully! But it happened at my own place and my head cook and good friend Tony set me up. I don’t recall it all as he unfairly used a number of shots of Wild Turkey to convince me. It was a wonderful night. Pete correctly commented that the Hootie song was not a Hootie song which was true — which made me wonder since he knew that why did he pick it?! For the record, most of you chose Hootie and the Blowfish as the music I sang. They are one of my favorite groups, but were not the choice that night.

How many times have I traveled out of the country? 4, I think.

Fave Morning Coffee Stop: Dutch Bros. Everyone should have gotten this one right. If you are fortunate to have a Dutch Bros coffee in your neck of the woods, you understand.

All were pets except: LUCY. Lucy was a cool girl that was my partner in training at Carnival Cruise Lines. Maxie was a sweet yellow lab; Ranger was a special chocolate lab; Trooper was a German Shephard mix that grew up with my kids; Mr. No was our African Grey parrot, and he named himself.

What subject did I teach? Language Arts.

8th grade girl friend’s name: Kelley.

Phil the Lurk was nickname given by whom? Denise, as in Pikes Peak Denise. Most of you had no idea because those of you who knew us in Steve’s friendship forum came after. That back in about 2002, I think, when I was much less comfortable with online anything. Denise would see that rare occasion where I would log in and called me Philthelurk.

Favorite vehicle (owned the longest): 68 Chevelle. My son even missed this! The give away was the vehicle I owned the longest. I had the Chevelle for over 20 years and had bought it from the original owner. She cried the day we transferred the title. I even remember her calling me a year later to see how the car was! I made a mistake and sold it finally to a young guy that had followed me to work to offer me a price. It took about three months before I decided it was time to let it go. I didn’t cry but felt pretty bad. In hindsight, it was a mistake. All the others were vehicles I have owned at one time or another (72 Camero, 55 Chevy Pickup, 81 CJ5, 83 GLC).

Congrats again to Julie, who by knowledge or by guess picked 6 of the 10 correctly. For the rest of you, even Shana, who scored the lowest total, I will use an online randomizer to select who will win the other gift card from Starbucks. That will be announced on Wednesday! (promise).

And should you ever have opportunity to participate in another like contest, follow me on Twitter where I share more about what I think, do, read, and believe on a daily basis.

I have recently complained about all of the Facebook quizzes. Most I find annoying and only clutter my news feed from my “friends.” l was so annoyed at the I.Q. one. Everyone was coming back with results that complimented them how genius they were. I wondered what would the summary read like if you just purposely FAILED it! So I did.

I blatantly picked the wrong answers. The really bad ones. And the result was hilarious! It said, “Damn, you are dumb! You have the I.Q. of a monkey!”

I thought maybe that explained why I like bananas. A couple of responses tried to encourage me, not believing or knowing I purposely failed it.

Well, I have actually taken a couple of others, and the reason is that I find them to be activities that actually share or add to knowing each other. Tonight I took the What Punctuation Mark are You? I mean, I did major in English. The result was The Dash and the summary was:

You are a dash. Casual and freewheeling, you would rather be wearing flip flops and jeans. You are playful and full of surprises, but no one should make the mistake of underestimating you–you just might be the smartest person in the room.

Those who know me would agree probably with most of that …. and read that last line again! Banana anyone?

Yesterday I took the How Well do you Know Me? quiz on my son and only scored 50 percent! He has yet to take mine. C’mon! Greg, step it up.

You choose the questions and the answers to your quiz. Thus far, no one has scored more than 50 percent on my quiz, and those that did know me the least or have known me the shortest length of time.

A Contest

Since most of them do not read the blog …. I am going to share the questions AND the answers here! I will make it a contest as well. For the winner at my Facebook quiz, I will send a $5 Starbucks’ gift card. (I apologize to my real friends at Dutch Bros as I do not have access to gift cards from them. I will save them for a future contest.) To be fair to the readers of the blog only, if you leave a comment about my quiz, I will enter you in a drawing for one as well.

Here are the questions I posted in the How Well Do You Know Me? quiz:

What city was I born in? (Colorado Springs, Colorado; Lima, Ohio; Ajo, AZ; Atlanta, GA; Bozeman, MT)

What is my middle name? (Hubert, Jackson, Jeffrey, Austin, Ladelphia)

What song did I choose to sing at a karaoke bar? (Hint: First time) (Just Beat It - Michael Jackson, Peace of Mind - Hootie and the Blowfish, Mmmmmm - Crash Test Dummies, Hound Dog - Elvis Presley, Wonderful Tonight - Eric Clapton)

How many times have I traveled out of the country? (0, 1, 2, 3, 4)

Fave Morning Coffee Stop (Starbucks, Dutch Bros, 7-11)

All were pets except: (Maxie, Ranger, Trooper, Lucy, Mr. No)

What subject did I teach? (Language Arts, Mathematics, Social Studies, PE, Science)

8th grade girl friend’s name (Cathy, Kelley, Denise, Tammi, Gerri)

Phil the Lurk was nickname given by whom? (Steve, Littlehands, Denise, Tom, Scott)

Favorite vehicle (owned the longest) (72 Camero, 55 Chevy Pickup, 68 Chevelle, 81 CJ5, 83 GLC POS)

The questions and answers are all legit. I will share the answers and a bit of the stories behind them on the next post — which will be Saturday. Qualifying comments include those for this post and the Saturday answers post. You do not have to answer the questions to qualify for the drawing. Just leave a comment. Thanks for reading. Just have some fun.

Last fall, my blogging was challenged by a problem that kept me from updating and accessing it. That problem was fixed when I updated the Wordpress version. And then all kinds of stuff started to compete for my time and attention.

I started a Masters program, began exploring the Twitter application, moved from MySpace to Facebook, increasingly became disillusioned (again) with all the hype on the Internet ….

I placed the blog on a low priority, which I think was a mistake. While the pace of change with online modalities is moving at unprecedented speed, the question has recently been proposed that blogging is dead or dying. People want things now and in increments of 140 characters or less, Twitter like.

I hold out that blogs are still relevant and will continue to provide value in a multitude of ways.

I’m coming back. I find the blogging process one that helps slow and lessen the pace and noise found so prevalent in “new” social media. (Odd to hint that blogging is thought of having become passe.)

Twitter and Facebook and maybe Linkedin will still be part of my social marketing, media, and relationship activities. But I’m going to try and hold on to things that allow for reflection and sharing in ways that require more depth.

There’s way too much pretense and shallowness out there.

The coming months are bringing a couple more visits to see friends, passage of the halfway point in my Masters program, structuring of two exciting and challenging business plans, a re-design for the blog, and keeping grounded in the things that matter most.

I am slowly getting back to real blogging. I wanted to post some of the best worship music (in my opinion) I am listening to. It was only a year and a half ago that I even found myself able to listen to it. If you find that hard too, I’ll bet I understand why.

Here is Tim Hughes’ Be my Everything. First heard it a few weeks ago when it was played at Vineyard Church in North Phoenix. I hope to get that recorded as the worship group there does this song really well.

This is Casting Crown’s Voice of Truth. A friend told me this song reminded them of me. I’d say it is does represent where I tend to have been.