![](\"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/DesertDasies.png\")
<\/p>\nI was talking to Teri Lussier in email last week about Desert Daisies, an annual wildflower you find in the Sonoran Desert. People harvest the seeds and bring them home, and the flowers will eventually take over the whole yard — for the few weeks they’re around.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Beautiful little clarions of Spring, announcing in advance the blossoming of the citrus trees — when Phoenix is at its ultimate perfect best and god himself is green with envy.<\/p>\n
When I picked Teri to be my partner in last Spring’s ProjectBlogger competition, I chose better than I knew. I admired her spark, her spunkiness — what the Irish might call the soul of a poet. But I could not have foreseen her depths — although I have been more than delighted to discover them over the last year. I hope BloodhoundBlog has been good for her. I know<\/i> she has been very good for BloodhoundBlog. Working here and at TheBrickRanch.com<\/a>, she has blossomed into a powerhouse weblogger.<\/p>\n So it’s a delight for me to announce that Teri Lussier is the first person to win The Odysseus Medal, The Black Pearl Award and The People’s Choice Award all in the same week.<\/p>\n The winning entry? Zillow creates the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine<\/a>, of course.<\/p>\n I know some poor benighted soul will have to go digging for evidence of corruption, so I will tell you now that the fact that Teri and I happen to be on the same side of the issue of real estate licensing had nothing to do with my choice. She hit not just a home run but a grand slam with her essay, and the position she took says nothing at all about the quality of her work — except insofar as writing the heartfelt truth puts the writer at one with the gods.<\/p>\n I normally quote from winning entries, but, in this case, I want you to go and read Teri’s whole post<\/a>. Print it out and tape it to your monitor. Inscribe it into your mind as a particularly worthy example of the truth Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was talking to Teri Lussier in email last week about Desert Daisies, an annual wildflower you find in the Sonoran Desert. People harvest the seeds and bring them home, and the flowers will eventually take over the whole yard — for the few weeks they’re around. Beautiful little clarions of Spring, announcing in advance […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,3,6,5,23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2742","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-blog-carnivals","7":"category-blogging","8":"category-marketing","9":"category-real-estate","10":"category-the-odysseus-medal","12":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2737,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2737\/the-odysseus-medal-competition-voting-for-the-peoples-choice-award-is-open-23\/","url_meta":{"origin":2742,"position":0},"title":"The Odysseus Medal competition — Voting for the People’s Choice Award is open","author":"Greg Swann","date":"March 9, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"My take is that the most important news this week was Zillow.com's announcement that it will be doing background checks on the loan originators it will be referring to consumers as a part of its forthcoming mortgage product. In consequence, this week's short list is all about Zillow's announcement and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog Carnivals"","block_context":{"text":"Blog Carnivals","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blog-carnivals\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2047,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2047\/the-odysseus-medal-competition-voting-for-the-peoples-choice-award-is-open-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":2742,"position":1},"title":"The Odysseus Medal competition — Voting for the People’s Choice Award is open","author":"Greg Swann","date":"October 14, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I had been doing a short list of 20 nominees, but I had the idea that that was an overwhelming number. (It was for me.) This week I cut the short list to 12, and it's not only more manageable, it seemed to be easier to distinguish the exemplary posts\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog Carnivals"","block_context":{"text":"Blog Carnivals","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blog-carnivals\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2161,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2161\/the-odysseus-medal-competition-voting-for-the-peoples-choice-award-is-open-5\/","url_meta":{"origin":2742,"position":2},"title":"The Odysseus Medal competition — Voting for the People’s Choice Award is open","author":"Greg Swann","date":"November 4, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"A dozen-and-a-half nominees, but seven of them are from BloodhoundBlog. We had a great week; there were five more that I had to wince hard and cut. A lot from the news, as usual, plus tools, tips, tricks and techniques and the kind of deep thinking that makes this competition\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog Carnivals"","block_context":{"text":"Blog Carnivals","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blog-carnivals\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2610,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2610\/the-odysseus-medal-competition-voting-for-the-peoples-choice-award-is-open-20\/","url_meta":{"origin":2742,"position":3},"title":"The Odysseus Medal competition — Voting for the People’s Choice Award is open","author":"Greg Swann","date":"February 17, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"We have 18 entries on the short list this week, out of a long list of 74 posts. Vote for the People's Choice Award here. You can use the voting interface to see each nominated post, so comparison is easy. Ahem: Please don't spam all your friends to come and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog Carnivals"","block_context":{"text":"Blog Carnivals","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blog-carnivals\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2963,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2963\/the-odysseus-medal-competition-voting-for-the-peoples-choice-award-is-open-26\/","url_meta":{"origin":2742,"position":4},"title":"The Odysseus Medal competition — Voting for the People’s Choice Award is open","author":"Greg Swann","date":"April 13, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"We have 17 entries on the short list this week, out of a long long list of 60 posts. This week I'm showing nothing but Black Pearls, practical hard-headed ideas for working better, faster and more profitably. Vote for the People's Choice Award here. You can use the voting interface\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog Carnivals"","block_context":{"text":"Blog Carnivals","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blog-carnivals\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2410,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2410\/the-odysseus-medal-competition-voting-for-the-peoples-choice-award-is-open-12\/","url_meta":{"origin":2742,"position":5},"title":"The Odysseus Medal competition — Voting for the People’s Choice Award is open","author":"Greg Swann","date":"December 23, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"There are 36 entries on the short list this week. That's a ton, but, even so, it's less than half of what we started with. Given that it's a holiday week, there was a lot of great stuff this week. We knew that going in, because both Jeff Kempe and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog Carnivals"","block_context":{"text":"Blog Carnivals","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blog-carnivals\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2742\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/WinnerTheOdysseusMedal.jpg\")
![](\"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/WinnerTheBlackPearl.jpg\")
![](\"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/WinnerPeoplesChoiceAward.jpg\")
<\/p>\n