When Seven Days announced their Readers Choice awards last year — including one for Best Vermont Blog — we came to you straight out, hat in hand, and asked for your vote. A group of dedicated Satanists were rumored to have the contest in hand, but your response eventually powered VDB to a total not even the Devil himself could match.

And when Cathy Resmer contacted us to say that we’d gone over the top, we here at VDB shouted Hallelujah.

But as Miss America well knows, a year is only 365 days long.

It’s that time again, and Seven Days is now seeking votes in 80 categories for their summer Seven Daysies issue. In a sensible move, they’ve broken the Best Vermont Blog category in two this year: you can now vote for Best Vermont Political Blog, and Best Vermont Non-Political Blog.

Which means that VDB needs you now, more than ever.

Only you can say if we’ve earned your vote, but since last year we’ve tried our best to refine the quality of the site still further: to bring you the analytical and the absurd, the local and the national, full-length interviews, high-quality cartooning and sound-rich political satire.

We’ve tried to make the site look good, and read well, obsessing about the language so you won’t have to.

Also, we recently brought you video of a bird pooping on the arm of George W. Bush.

And we’ve worked to bring the Vermont blogosphere together, in the third dimension, with events like the Political BBQ/Hamburger Summit and the wintertime Bloggers’ Bistro.

(Second Hamburger Summit July 15th, don’t forget.)

If these things leave you unmoved, email us and we will make up more things, better things. We will leave no stone unturned in pursuit of a second Daysie.

It’s that important.

Clink the link for Cathy Resmer’s description of the contest; the ballot is at the end of her post. But just a few cautions before you zap off:

1) You need to vote in at last 23 categories to have your ballot counted. We know: it’s a little Floridian. But please hang in there with it.

2) You must use VDB’s entire URL for your vote to count. So “Vermont Daily Briefing” won’t count; only “Vermontdailybriefing.com” takes the cake.

Please encourage your friends and co-workers and family and people you see hanging out by the liquor store to vote too, though only once each (apparently they’re going to be checking that sort of thing).

Thanks in advance.

Blogging is a cursed vocation.

There’s no paycheck in it. It’s inherently lonely and draining, especially at a site run by a single proprietor. All of which is to say that winning the contest last year meant a lot to us.

No joke.