• blogher08,  crazy stuff,  travel

    Planes trains and automobiles

    plugging in

    Here I am sitting on the floor in a session on day two trying to write a post about day one. I’m a little worse for wear so you’ll have to forgive me if my super-hyper-I’m-having-so-much-fun edge has worn off. Not that it hasn’t been fun here. It has! Too much fun maybe. The roar of all the crazy talking makes me feel like I need to go get a scream canister and store some of it up Monsters, Inc.-style. I could probably power a whole city on the sheer energy of talking that is going on here.

    the schedule that was impossible to figure out for some strange reason

    I’m also a little worn out because we had a crazy adventure last night in regards to our transportation home from the convention. We opted not to stay in the hotel and in many regards that is a big drag. But on the upside, we are staying with a very good friend and I know our kids are having a blast there.

    However, getting to the city from our friend’s house is not as simple as you would think. When you look on the map it looks like a hop, skip, and a jump. It’s actually a long train ride followed by a short train ride and a lot of train-schedule reading which we apparently are not very good at.

    schmedule

    I shouldn’t speak for CC but I was horrible at reading this schedule. I would stare at it for several minutes, thinking I had figured out what train was coming at one time, and then—poof!—that information would fly out of my ear like a fart as soon as I turned around. Everyone else seems to be able to figure these things out and they have jobs at Burger King so I have no idea what my problem is.

    Anyway, it was complicated! Some trains stop at some stations and not at others and sometimes, like on weekends, they don’t ever stop at all. And then at midnight the trains go to bed and if you don’t get back to the station before the last train leaves, you turn into a big fat pumpkin waiting to get mugged.

    We knew all this and tried to leave ourselves plenty of cushion time between the last party of the night and the last train of the night but things went terribly wrong. In fact, we planned on catching the train before the last train. We’re not that stupid, right?

    What we didn’t count on was our inability to catch a cab from the last party back to the hotel in order to catch a train back to our other train before midnight. (I feel like I need to add a sentence about planes trains and automobiles somewhere in here but it really doesn’t fit so I’ll just parenthesize).

    We tried to catch a cab for an HOUR. We probably could have just walked all the way home and it would have been easier but we were bumpkins and didn’t know any better. I guess we just weren’t hot enough and didn’t show enough leg or something because cab after cab just blew by us like we were moldy cheese.

    When we finally did get a cab and get back to the hotel to retrieve our swag bags, it was too close to midnight for comfort. Not to mention our cell phones were dying and we had no hope of waking up our friends to come up from Redwood City to get us.

    Earlier in the night, on our walk to the last party, we had come across a character who jokingly told us he had just mugged a guy for a pair of $300 sunglasses. Why he wanted to brag about his crime to us I’m not sure, but he did. It scared the crap out of me. Was he joking? Was he just trying to scare us? Was he going to pull out a shotgun and demand our purses? I didn’t know. But even worse, just as we turned to duck into the entrance of the party location, he reached out and touched CC’s purse that she had tucked tightly under her shoulder and covered by her pashmina. How did he know she had a purse there? It was creepy.

    So while I’m normally pretty tough when I’m waking downtown streets in big cities, I kinda had the heebie jeebies. I didn’t really want to hang out in a train station because we would most likely miss the last train. We had no cell phone to call home (because it died) and no one to come pick us up because they were asleep and couldn’t hear their cell phones that we couldn’t call because our cell phones were dead anyway. Long story short, we decided to take a cab all the way from San Francisco to Redwood City to the tune of eighty big fat dollars.

    EIGHTY BUCKS!!! Which is actually a deal because it normally costs $120, but still. I was so bummed. Eighty bucks is not a lot to pay for your safety but it wasn’t something I budgeted for and this trip has been budgeted down to the penny. It sort of ruined my night. But it was safe and we got home and everything was okay.

    I’m sorry that is the only thing I have to write about to sum up day one of blogher but our midnight adventure sort of eclipsed our day. I’m sure day two will be much better.

  • crazy stuff,  illos,  spilling my guts,  travel

    BlogHer or Bust!

    Blogher Here I Come!

    Guess what time it is?! It’s time to pack up and go to BlogHer!!! Wooo Hooo! This is my first time. I’m a “blogher virgin.” Oooooh. Scary. I know everyone is probably sick of hearing about blogher this and blogher that…and I’m sorry to be yet another mouth spouting off but I have to write just a few things because I’m a tiny bit nervous.

    However, unlike everyone else, I do not have any social anxiety disorders. Wow. Can you believe it? Three cheers for not needing meds! (Or three cheers for denial, either one.) I’m actually pretty good at small talk and I’m super-excited to be in the middle of a big noisy crowd! If there is really good music at the parties, I might even bust a move. I can’t promise that I’ll be a good dancer. I might smack you with my flailing “butterfly arms” but I’m not shy, usually. (Is there even going to be music at the blogher parties?)

    Of course there was that one time ages and ages ago when I went bowling with the after-work crowd and I started getting really insecure when all the Hottie McHotties of the office showed up with their own engraved bowling balls and matching team shirts. And yes, I sort of um…snuck off and hid in some long dark maroon-carpeted hallway until the cops came looking for me. That was a bad moment for me.

    But I’ve moved way way way past that. That was like fifty million years ago.

    I think the hardest thing for me now in social situations is just not talking loud enough. I have a really soft voice that sounds loud in my head. You hear mouse squeaks and think I’m shy and demure but in my head I am shouting like a big attention-seeking maniac. It’s really hard for me to project for some stupid reason. So sometimes I just don’t talk at all because no one can ever hear me.

    The other thing I’m worried about is that there are soooooooo many people I want to meet! I think I’m going to go crazy! I’m going to be that social butterfly whom everyone hates because she yappity-yaps so much and is distracted all the time. “Hey look there’s so-and-so gotta run!” I hate that. I’m going to try really hard to listen well and not explode from over-excitement.

    The other thing I’m afraid of is that I’m going to blank on people’s names. Some of you comment every day and you really are a huge part of my life but I’m scared that when I meet you in person (and you better introduce yourself to me because I do want to meet you!!!) my brain hard drive is going to get stuck on search mode, trying to remember who you are, and I might crash and have to be re-booted.

    That is one thing I really am ashamed of on this site. The fact that I don’t emotionally invest myself in my readers as much as you do in me. It’s all I can do to put a post together a few times a week and check on my family’s many many blogs. I try to get out and about to read your blogs but often I do not. I’m always getting surprised when I find out someone is moving all the way across the country or they just had a baby and I had no clue even though they had been writing about it for half a year.

    I want to apologize for that. It’s something that I’ve thought about a lot and a choice I have made to keep my sanity. Maybe someday when Baby Bug is in school I’ll be a better blog-reader and commenter but for now I’m mostly just a one-sided blogger. So feel free to slap me upside the head when you meet me in person. I deserve it.

    There you have it! I can’t wait to meet everybody. If you’re going to be there, please introduce yourself in the comments so I can study up and not be such an idiot.

    A word about the illustration…I had this daydream that if I had a GIANT yellow bag I would feel less insecure about myself because you all would be dazzled by my bag. Just think of how handy it would be in photos. Everyone would say, oh there’s SAJ and her giant yellow bag! But sadly, I do not have a giant yellow bag. So it’ll just have to be in my imagination. I guess I could steal one from Ikea but I don’t want to do that and besides those bags are noisy and crinkly. I’ll survive. I’m tough.

    Also, I’ll have my trusty sidekick cc with me.