The results are in.

The final votes for the Weblog Awards have been confirmed and this blog ended up a distant fourth (in the Best Middle Eastern or African Blog category) behind the three heavyweights Sandmonkey, Treppenwitz and Iraq the Model.

Since early on it was obvious that I would be lucky to get 10% of the votes of each of the top three, I had set a joking personal goal to beat The Sudanese Thinker. Inevitably, he saw my challenge and marshalled his forces to pull ahead of me for most of the week.

I gave up "blegging" on Thursday and as of Friday at sundown, I was behind TST by one vote 171-170.

So I was very surprised to see that between then and midnight I somehow gathered another 11 votes and pulled ahead. I guess the East Coast Orthodox crowd isn't my main readership!

So thanks to all of you who voted. Even with 3.22% of the total vote in a relatively minor category it was really an honor to be nominated and chosen as a finalist.

And read The Sudanese Thinker as well!