(Hi, if you got here from a business card, that’s because I’m an idiot and bought my own domain 5 days before BlogHer and with 250 business cards in tow.  Bookmark this bad boy, or grab the feed, the old site is, well, old.)

I’m going to try and get through much of the blogher stuff in this post as I can so that those of you who don’t care don’t have to keep reading about it.  But it’s likely going to take at least one more post after this, but that one is a different kind of story and it needs to be shared.  I’ll give you a hint, I got to meet with the Senior Advisor to the president and it was kickassery.

I flew in Thursday on the Party Plane, which had around 20 bloggers on it and was sheer awesomeness.  Southwest was AMAZING, and hilarity ensued.  Less funny was the limo snafu where two stretch limos ended up being only one stretch limo and we managed to fit 20 people into it.  I spent about two thirds of the trip on Meghan’s lap, but because she’s pretty much the nicest person ever, she didn’t tell anyone that I outrageously violated her personal space.  That I know of.

That night I went with “DJ” to the People’s Party and then the Room 704 party.  The former was insanely crowded, but in the midst of it, I got to meet Casey (and only had a briefly huge moment of OMG she knows who I am, and dude, she just hugged me.  She maybe even meant to, or maybe that was just me roping her into a totally uncomfortable moment.  Whatever.  It happened.) and several other lovely people who I should probably still remember.

Friday was an early morning panel on TMI, a play date with Valerie Jarrett, and then by far my favorite panel of the weekend.  It was on being a “patient blogger” and writing about health issues.  I had another small losing-my-shit moment when Mr. Lady, who was moderating, said she knew who I was (and then I tweeted about it, because it’s better to make your internal dorkiness known to the world…)  The discussion and it’s amazing panel members reminded me of why I began blogging in the first place and of what I wanted for this space.  Then more parties, one with a chocolate fountain, one with unicorn cake and whiskey.

Saturday I accompanied a new hilarious friend to the “Married with Children” fountain (sometimes known as the Buckingham fountain), so that she could get us all arrested conquer an item on her bucket list (a poorly explained reason that prompted my husband to ask me if she was dying.  (She’s not.)).  I’ll let her tell you about it, but revel in my pictures when she posts them.  As it turns out, given a decent camera set on autofocus, I’m not a horrible photographer.

Later I went to a humor blogging session where I laughed so hard I nearly passed out (also? Satan likes his rooms cooler than that one) and learned much about being funny.  As I’m sure you can tell.

I then went home, changed and found myself invited to a super secret pizza party which…wait, I don’t think I’m allowed to tell you about.  But whatever you do, don’t look up the hashtag supersecretpizzaparty on twitter.  Seriously.  Don’t.

From there I went with Heather, Mike, Meghan, Maya, Emmie and Megan to bowlher, (affectionately known as blowher), where I wowed everyone with my mad bowling skills.  Dude, 72 is a totally respectable score.  Shut up.  And from there, we went to the Cheeseburgher party, where I got to meet The Bloggess, Crystal, and Amalah, among others.

Frankly, I could go on and on and name drop more people who don’t remember me, but I’d rather take just a moment to say a few other things.  There were 1400 women in one hotel.  There was enough estrogen floating in the atmosphere to kill a fleet of elephants and of course, with the estrogen, came the drama.  It is what it is.  We’ll never all get along, but the internet is a big place.  Who says we need to?

There’s also quite a bit of backlash from people who, in my opinion, are taking shit way too seriously.  This was a blogging convention.  Not a save the world convention.  Yes, the sponsors were a little excessive.  Yes, the swag whores were whorish.  But, dude, who cares that more people went to a panel about popular culture than one about travel blogging?  Who cares that someone is labeling you a mommy blogger?  (And do you blog about your kids and mothering them?  Then I just don’t know how that label ever possibly became associated with your blog…).

In the end, it was good, mostly clean, not at all sober, fun.  I had an even better time than I imagined, and shhhh, don’t tell my husband (and don’t tell my mom, she’ll just tell everyone she knows), but I already have my ticket for next year.

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