Back from Blogher

1. The homeless people in San Francisco are wicked creative and refreshingly honest. Leaving a café on Geary Street I passed a man with "NEED MONEY FOR ALCOHOL RESEARCH" scrawled on a piece of cardboard. Another time I passed a homeless mime while walking to the Macy's party. A homeless MIME. He stood on a milk crate, arm outstretched, with a tin cup in his hand. Here in St. Louis (and just about everywhere else I've been) the bums scream 'GIMMIE SOME MONEY!" while shaking an empty forty at you. That, or they make up some sob story about how they need money for bills/gas/food. Did I ever tell you the time I gave one of those dudes $5 for while in the drive-thru line at McD's only to watch him walk to the liquor store across the street? Yeah.

2. It is very weird to get your party on in the furniture department of a Macy's.

3. Speaking of Macy's, thew San Francisco Macy's is the fanciest Macy's I've ever seen in my life. Our Macy's here in St. Louis is g-h-e-t-t-o compared to what they have going on over there in Union Square. The floors were marble, they had huge pieces of sculpture everywhere, and I was afraid to touch anything.

5. San Francisco is humid and cold and whenever I went outside my curls kinked up and I looked like I walked out of a Soul Glo commercial.

6. I adore Tracey and Catherine more than ever. I had the best time with them over the weekend and I wish that we weren't scattered across the continent. They are genuine and so much fun. I appreciate people who say what they think rather than only saying what advances their interests. I will drink free champagne and eat bacon-flavored cheese by the Ed Hardy bags with them anytime. It took every ounce of willpower I had not to put Catherine's baby Jasper on a cracker and stuff him in my mouth.

I also met Amy for the first time in-person and instantly felt like I've known her for years. I also met this lovely lady for the first time; she is an absolute blast. I also cannot say enough about Isabel - her hospitality and Alphamom suite saved my sanity. It was a sanctuary compared with the insaneness of the conference space; she wore her fabulous heels and stuffed everyone full of cupcakes, lattes, pizza, and cheeseburgers - and not with PR pitches. She also had non-diet soda, a rarity at Blogher.

8. That one time? At baby camp? When we all flipped open our laptops at the nervous corporate speakers and typed out whatever smart-alecked thought that popped into our heads without any thought as to how intimidating we looked to the speaker? Fate has a wonderful way of handling paybacks. When I walked into my panel it was filling up. Fast. It ended up being standing/sitting room only. I am what I call a "fence-sitting extrovert." I am bubbly and outgoing when needed, not all of the time. I can turn it on when I'm behind the mic for my own show, or speaking; this was different because all the people in my panel (There's More to Monetization Than Advertising) were my peers. I knew what their thought processes would be because I've thought the same in other panels. Thankfully, doing radio has given me a massive set of balls when it comes to public speaking. I opened my notes up on my laptop in case I had a brain fart or I needed a nice segue. I thought it went great. Here are links to the session's liveblogs.

9. Kristen is an absolutely fabulous roommate. She's snarky, hysterical, and I just love her to bits. I first met her in D.C. three or so years ago and we've kept in touch ever since. She and I made the perfect good-cop-team when confronting the Westin after the hotel charged me $1,000 for our room. While I dialed my tone back to one decibel below all-out rage while growling "THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE" to the scared guy at the front desk, Kristen said in her best syrupy-sweet voice "Yeah, you know, we're just going to have to take care of this and I think you probably want to find someone with the adequate means to assist us." Julie the Manager saved the day and got the bunk charges removed from my account.

10. Bangs were good. Lots of people liked.

11. My only gripe about the event came during a discussion on how to increase traffic. Bloggers wanted to know if there was some sort of magical way to attract PR attention, more readers, the Magi, blah blah and the whole time the little voice in my head is yelling: "WTF? What about WRITING WELL??" You can kiss as much ass as you want, fawn over whomever you want as a way to siphon traffic, try SEO tricks, but the bottom line is that people won't continually read if your content sucks. The End.

12. I became reacquainted with why I started keeping a diary of my life online. It wasn't to be miss popular, it wasn't to get chummy with PR firms or corporations, it wasn't to fast-track my way to this or that; I started my website because I wanted to write, I've done it all my life, it's the only way I know how to work through things, and I thought that if anybody bothered to read they would keep me sharp and honest. It's ironic to me how such a solitary pursuit has come to mean "community" simply because of the medium.

13. San Francisco was beautiful and all, but whenever I visit another city I'm reminded just how much I love St. Louis. Even when it's a trillion degrees.

14. All of my camera batteries were dead even though I recharged them before I left St. Louis, thus I ended up using my Palm Centro for most of them. Here are Tracey's photos; hers are better. Also, here is my Flickr photo set; I'm still adding to it. Now my brain is shutting off.