Archives from 2002-2006

Jul

20

Homeward bound

Handy Tip! While sitting on your ass in an airport waiting for your delayed flight to arrive, don’t read this entry, unless you want to get all blinky-eyed and sniffly and at turns uplifted then maudlin and eventually find yourself wondering if the Unexpected Thing in YOUR future includes United Flight 820 plummeting into a mountainside on the way back to Seattle.

(Uh. If that were to happen, these would be my last words, archived forever on this page. Shit. Um, um, um, please tell my boys how very much I love them and how they have made my life more rich and joyous than I ever could have imagined and tell JB how he has been the best husband a girl could hope for even if he did just text message me an offer for a “meat burrito” when I get home and tell those rotten pets I kind of like them even though they are monstrous hairy pains in my ass and, uh, COCK-HOLSTER.)

(What? I want to be remembered for my eloquent phrasing!)

I’m glad to be on my way back home to my little family; even though it was nice to be on my own for a few days I feel something like a rubber band in my chest growing tighter and tighter and pulling me back. I miss holding Dylan, badly. I miss having weird little conversations with Riley and seeing his wide-open, smiling face. I think if BlogHer were to last one more day all the women who brought their babies with them would have take out restraining orders against me because I WANT TO TOUCH YOUR BABY RIGHT NOW NOW NOW NOW NO I DON’T CARE ABOUT GERMS OR PERSONAL SPACE YOU HAND ME THAT FUCKING BABY NOW.

I should, ha ha, clarify that I did not in fact approach any baby-toting BlogHer mamas and spray little hysterical balls of saliva-foam in their faces about how they needed to let me touch their children, just for a minute, just a TOE, give me that baby toe and let me put it in my mouth OM NOM NOM NOM. No, I did not. But it was close, on more than one occasion.

Other things I did not do: wear half the clothes I brought, take pictures of actual people, figure out a hairstyle that could survive San Francisco’s gale-force winds, hand out even 1/8 of the business cards I brought, eat at any of the nine million awesome restaurants I wanted to check out, or get Acts 2 & 3 of Dr. Horrible installed on my iPod in time for my return flight.

I did meet lots of very cool people and everyone was consistently just as awesome as they come across on their blog and even better looking in person, no lie. I didn’t love every session I went to but most were pretty good, it was mainly kind of interesting and fun to hear the conversations that would sprout up from audience questions.

BlogHer attendees tend to travel in packs and occasionally I felt dorky and weird when I was by myself; sometimes I was fairly convinced that everyone else knew everyone else and I was the only one going, who the hell are all these (fabulously coiffed) people? But whenever I forced myself to stop being flattened by self-conciousness I would inevitably strike up a conversation with a nearby friendly face, and I have to say, everyone I talked to — even if it was a five-second discussion in the elevator about the wildly fluctuating hotel temperature (it’s cold! It’s hot! Take off your sweater! Put it back on! Show us your tits!) — was nice as hell.

All in all, a good experience. I’d go next time. You should too, okay? We can travel in a pack.

PS: a few more photos — Yoga! Maniacal grinning! Random city-meandering!

Jul

19

BlogHer, Day 2

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THRILLING BLOGHER UPDATE:

So! I survived my 7 AM yoga class, although it was dicey there for a minute when the alarmingly sinewy instructor led us all in a group Om (I don’t know why this sort of thing makes me so phenomenally uncomfortable but it sure as hell does, especially when the Om is sort of lilting and songlike and my flat zombie-looking-for-brains “UHHHH” stands out like a turd in a punchbowl). It was actually nice to get up and moving so early, once I peeled myself out of bed and whimpered about it for a while — I’m so FREAKING tired, despite going to bed at a fairly decent hour (I bailed on what sounded like a really great party last night in favor of eating ice cream in my room, mostly because I’d spent an hour or so yelling “WHAT WAS THAT?” and “PARDON?” over the relentless thumpa-thumpa-thumpa house music at some cocktail party reception thing and apparently that sucked all the nightlife right out of me).

It’s probably kind of dreary to read BlogHer posts that include a million links to other people’s websites so I’ll just say that I have really enjoyed meeting so many cool bloggers and not one single person has been an asshole. The sessions I’ve attended have been good, and the community keynote was ridiculously awesome — I laughed myself nearly incontinent at some of them, and others made me cry like a total pussy.

In other news, I’ve been in my hotel room for, what, two days now, and I just realized there’s a little coffee machine hidden in the closet. I guess I can stop ordering the $67 room service half carafe in the mornings now.

Pictures I took yesterday while briefly wandering around near the hotel: