Friday, the day I prove I have no attention span

Yes, there will be a day by day play by play. Because WhyMommy asked for details. Be careful what you wish for.

The W kept weaving itself in and out of my good graces. Dirty room, but quickly corrected. Booger on the bathroom wall, but oh so comfy bed. By the way, I cleaned said booger off the wall just so that Mamma Loves wouldn't think I put it there. It was totally nasty.

Friday morning, we dined in our room. The breakfast was really yummy, which it should have been since for 2 of us it cost a little over $50. As Deb pointed out, there were no coffee pots in the rooms, which was a total bummer. And Chicago? Do you sell no Diet Coke anywhere? What is with the crazy Pepsi monopoly?

The first session I attended was about finding and writing about your passion. Christine Kane was speaking, and since she is a singer/songwriter, I thought I would learn something here. Not so much. I did learn that there is a slightly hyper woman blogging about travel and drag racing. And she brought props. As the conversation bobbed about the room and people basically started asking if they could have help finding their passion, I nearly nodded off before I realized that they were missing the point.

All of these personal bloggers were looking for something more. Some sort of validation that they had a passion when all they needed to see was that their passion is their life. Their families. Themselves. And what on earth is wrong with that? Unless you really like drag racing, and then by all means, blog about drag racing.

In a way though, I did find my passion in that session. I found Liz. We were sitting a person apart from each other and realized it only when we both made a comment. We ever so briefly interrupted the session with what was almost squealing, but we are both too mature for that. Muffled squeals only.

Mamma Loves went to the naked blogging session and had great discussions about how women everywhere were preserving history, or herstory, with blogging. We are passing down our stories and leaving trails of legacy with every entry we write. Even if they are about port-o-potties. Then at the end, everyone got a bag full of sex toys. I'm not sure how that connection was made, but somehow it was. So at lunch, I was surrounded by people pulling out who knows what from their silver gift bags followed by rounds of laughter. I laughed too, but mainly at myself because I had no clue what most everything was. If it wasn't shaped like a penis, then I was clueless. And I'm okay with that.

The next session was the Art of Storytelling. I almost fell asleep just typing that. I sat next to the beautiful and funny Slackermommy. We tried to be good, really we did. Instead, the note exchange went like this:
"This is boring."
"Wanna slip out?"
"Is that rude?"
"Yes."
Then we bolted. Headed up to the Yahoo! internet cafe and ate Jelly Bellys. Or at least I ate Jelly Bellys. Mmmm. Sugar.

Session number three was on writing reviews. Since I want to do a good job for Izzy over at Props and Pans, I thought this would be the place for me. What I learned here is that I'm really glad I write reviews for Props and Pans and no one else. Izzy allows us to be a little snarky, a little irreverent, and a lot ourselves. I did manage to make a pointless comment and give out our url to the crowd, tell what we were doing, and in doing such, snag the card of a woman who would like for us to test drive cars. Nice.

Rounding out the day was a session on The State of the Momosphere. I think if I took myself and my blog way more seriously, this session would have made more sense to me. What I learned here was that there is a blogger I have been seriously missing out on, and she is Lena at The Cheeky Lotus. Other than that? I was uncertain about what all of the hubbub was about. Ads on blogs. High school cliques. Traffic and stats. And oh, did you know that some people comment just so that you will go to their blog? That little fact made me cringe because someone had just said to me earlier, "Oh, Canape. I see your comments a lot." Um, yeah. Just so you know, I do that because I have something to say and not because I care if you read about how I tucked my skirt into my panties.

The fact is, Blogher was a little cliquey. But so what? There were hundreds of women there. Did someone really think that we were all going to be best friends before we left? There were women who had been to conferences before who had prior relationships. Did someone really think that they were looking to ignore their old friends just so that they didn't seem cliquey? There were women I wanted to meet and hang out with, and I did just that. I didn't hang with them exclusively, and I didn't feel bad that I didn't become part of their "group." Then again, I've never been one to be in a group. Most people were really nice when you got the chance to talk to them. Even Kristen had a conversation with me when she had a minute, when she easily could have stayed put inside the comfort zone of the women she was already friends with.

The cocktail party was outdoors, cool, breezy, and generally much more quiet. Hoorah. I could talk to people and hear what they said back to me. It was delightful. Christine Kane played about three songs which I didn't listen to. I heard later that she had only agreed to play if people listened and were quiet during her performance and she probably only played three songs because people were still talking. That made me chuckle. It's not an unreasonable thing to want when you play, but it is ridiculous to expect that to be possible at a cocktail party. Cocktail party = wallpaper music. You aren't even in a bar. You are on a rooftop with hundreds of women and free booze. No one is going to be quiet and listen to you. She should have just turned the gig down, or offered to do an indoor concert that people would elect to attend.

I really enjoyed talking to Redneck Mommy. A lot. Kind of made me want to move to Canada and just be pals. But for now, I'll just continue stalking her on her blog.

After that, the evening sort of faded out because my blood sugar crashed. As I was sort of crumbled on the floor, waiting for dinner, a couple of people offered me Luna bars, but no one asked if I wanted to go eat with them. I thought that was pretty strange. It worked out great though, because I got to have a nice dinner with Mamma Loves and Jenny from Absolutely Bananas. She has joined the growing list of women that I lurve.

After dinner, I crashed in the room. I heard about the wild parties that carried on into the evening, but Little Bird and I needed some quiet time and rest. So we headed back each evening around 11:00 to hang out with some silence and big down pillows, recharging our batteries for the next day. Because the days were getting better all the time.