*Thanks to the chaos surrounding The Great San Francisco Airport Adventure of 2008, Works-For-Me Wednesday will be posted a little later than usual. It will go up at 8 am CST on Wednesday.
BlogHer was excellent. There was an enormous amount of information, and there was enough meeting-and-greeting to turn my normally extroverted self into a bleary-eyed zombie.
I suspect every woman there, at some point in the weekend, wondered if she really "belonged" there. I know I felt that way. At times I felt like I stood out like a red-state Presbyterian housewife at a San Francisco tech convention.
Maybe because I was a red-state Presbyterian housewife at a San Francisco tech convention.
Occasional jitters aside, I'm very glad I went. There was some good information, but--even better--I met some ladies who are so delightful I just wanted to bring them home in my suitcase.
And I mean that, of course, in the most non-stalker-ish way possible.
Saturday night a group of us ditched the cocktail party for a very loud dinner at a greasy-spoon diner. The conversation and dessert flowed freely:
Back row, left to right: Heather of Desperately Seeking Sanity, Janice of 5 Minutes For Mom, me, Christine of The Home Team Wins. Front row, left to right: Steph of Adventures in Babywearing, Arianne of To Think Is To Create, Susan of 5 Minutes For Mom, Mary of Owlhaven, Melanie of Blogging Basics 101. Not pictured: Nicole of Apron Strings Aflutter and Stephanie of Metropolitan Mama.
Sunday we spent a long day seeing the sights, including a boat trip out to Alcatraz. That is one creepy and oppressive place. I'm glad I saw it, because I had been considering a life of crime, but after seeing the consequences, I believe I'll stick with PTA and soccer practice.
Back on the wharf, just to prove I was there, I had Melanie snap this photo (the downside of sightseeing with only one friend is that you have to be in all the photos by yourself):
(P.S.--that's my super-cute Couture Moms t-shirt buried under the layers of clothing.) Layers were necessary, because San Francisco was COLD. I had about two dozen people e-mail or Twitter me to be sure and bring a sweatshirt.
So you might think I would have, you know, brought a sweatshirt.
I didn't, though--I guess I couldn't bring myself to believe that when it's 95 degrees in Oklahoma it could be sweatshirt weather on the Pacific ocean. And I suffered freezingly for my naivete. It all worked out, because the hundreds of sweatshirt stores along Fisherman's Wharf do a very brisk business (pun intended) selling their wares to unsuspecting Southerners like me.
Happily, I'm home now. While it's interesting to slip into a semi-sophisticated life of panel discussions, PR pitches and cocktail parties for a few days, it's even sweeter to slip back into my real life. I belong right here on this couch with my holey socks and three-year-old yoga pants, smooshed into a crowded pile with my five favorite people.
There is absolutely, positively NO place like home.
