. . . soooooo many posts about BlogHer! I LOVE THEM!!!

Strange as it may seem, since I am such an opinionated blowhard
somewhat assertive on this blog, I am actually very shy in real life.
It's difficult for me to walk into a room full of people and approach
someone; I always assume that nobody would care to associate with a
boring person like me. My panel went well, thanks to Shireen, Marilyn, and Monty; I knew that even if I flopped, they would carry on without me. They were so good.

At BlogHer, people spoke to me. People sat with me. People listened to me. Holy cow. I felt like SOMEBODY there.

Was
it the other-side-of-the-continent atmosphere? Had I changed when I got
off the plane? Are BlogHer people just nicer than other people? All of
the above?

Possibly that last one.

Hanging out with Monty and Fausta and Kimberle
did wonders for me, too. They are, all three of them, so very
outstandingly wonderful!!! We traversed Chinatown and ate sushi and
oysters and drank sake and took pictures of each other with dragons and
in front of shop windows containing duck feet and beheaded waterfowl of
various sorts, and tackled the crowds and the disco lights at Ruby Skye, and dodged all the Saving Grace
misc, except for that one gigantic poster which we posed in front of
and pretended we were part of. It was a marvelous lot of fun. I would
kill to have Kim's hair. It's just simply gorgeous.

Food? There
was food everywhere I turned, at BlogHer. I will have to say that the
box lunches were not all that, novelty that they were, and for people
on low carb diets, they were a disaster. Bread, bread, more bread, and
pasta. They were all gone by the time I got to lunch on Friday, but as
I'm too fat anyway, it wasn't a big deal. As for breakfast? For once in
my life, I had all the orange juice I wanted. It was just so delicious,
and so COLD. I do love me some ice cold, and I mean ICE COLD, orange
juice. Room temp? Can't drink it. BlogHer orange juice was perfect. I
couldn't eat the doughnuts, etc, because I'm diabetic, but I got by.
Besides, we were accosted (the good kind) by hors d'oeuvres and wine
everywhere we went, and the bottled water and diet Pepsi were abundant.

My
ability to make a hardship out of the simplest things reared its ugly
head at Sunday lunch, when I bit into my really delicious sandwich and
speared my lower lip with a concealed toothpick. Seriously, it went all
the way through my lower lip and out again. It still throbs, but now
it's just funny. Who but me? I didn't know whether to just sit there
and laugh at myself through the shock and tears, or run back to
Chinatown and buy a lip ring. I mean, the piercing was already there
and all . . . .

It's still there. How do you put medicine on the
inside of your lip? I'm hoping the saliva will fix it, because I don't
have any other options. I'm sure it will be fine.

Don't panic,
Westin St. Francis. I'm not one of those people who sue. I'm a nice
person. But after this, I'll be feeling up all my sandwiches before I
plunge into them with my body parts. So to speak.

I learned so
much over that weekend that I'm really kind of disoriented sitting here
and trying to remember it all in ways that can be translated to the
written page. I know for a fact that my brain had to have grown a new
section to store it all.

One thing I'm very happy about: so many
websites and conferences and literature and whatnot that welcome women
of, how shall I put this, a 'certain age,' are very condescending even
when they don't realize it. Yes, I'm over the hill
forty (a LOT over), but I am not remotely interested in a website or
conference that talks to me of Depends and AARP and declining vision
and Alzheimer's and Ensure and velcro fasteners for my housedress and
cell phones with one big button and ways to entertain the grandchildren
and Big Band music and recipes for soft foods and electric grocery cart
wheelchairs and great denture adhesives. I'm interested in writing and
electronics and social media and marketing and books and makeup and
purses and hanging out with friends and laughing out loud and eating in
funky restaurants and navigating around Chinatown and computers, all
about computers. BlogHer did so many things just exactly right, and one
of them was that it treated all of us the same. There were people there
from 18 to 80, and everybody did whatever she wanted most to do. Mixed
groups? I'll say! Isn't that how the world really is?

As for the
hotel itself, well, I was overwhelmed by its beauty, its accessibility,
and its class. All the staff were gracious and helpful, the room was
glorious, the shower was amazing, and nothing went wrong. Um, except
for my credit card being declined and all, but that wasn't the hotel's
fault.

Whoops, did I really confess that? My bad. It's fixed now.

I loved the sessions and the food and the people and the vendors and the loot and the vicinity and the sights and the parties.

Sunday
was perhaps the best of all. Small and intimate and with handpicked
topics. People still sat with me and my self-consciousness melted away.
Of course, that's also when I pierced my lip with the toothpick. Sigh.

My
adorable tiny pink computer was a real conversation-starter, too. Thank
you, Asus Eee Pc! I love my little laptop - it does everything a big
laptop can do, and it's light as a feather and fits in my purse.

I
had no problems whatsoever at the airport, and the fact that I couldn't
slow my brain down and get some sleep on the red-eye wasn't anybody's
fault but my own. My daughter picked me up at the airport at 7:30 a.m.
Monday morning and took me straight to the college, where I taught for
several hours while trying desperately to stay awake. I could have used
that toothpick for my eyelids!!! I am not a napper, but when I finally
got home around 4:00, I gave in and took a four-hour nap. Then I got
back up, wrote four articles, ate a sandwich (no toothpick), surfed the
'net, read a few posts about BlogHer, and went to bed for real around
2:30 a.m.

I had more than just a good time. It was more than a great time.

At BlogHer08, I found myself, and discovered that I'm not such a bad sort after all.

And oh, my BlogHer people, I can't WAIT to do it all again next year!!!

(Cross-posted at Scheiss Weekly)