requisite clunky blogher post

so! blogher! i went! and it was fantastic. i suspect you may be more than a little sick of all the write ups everywhere, and since i am lazy and not thoughtful or deep, i'll spare you a lengthy recap. so let's mostly look at pictures, shall we?

first off: everyone says this, but i really did meet some fantastic ladies out there. and got to meet up with more fantastic ladies who i "knew" but hadn't met. and see friends i've actually met through the blog in person person again.

thanks to nilsa and pocklock for a few of these, which i blatantly jacked from them

i know there's some angst out there about cliques and mean girls and highschool, and i don't really want to add to that drama, but here's my general take on it: i was SUPER EXCITED to meet up with "my" bloggers, like nilsa and shelly and pseudo. i mean, that's literally the number one reason i was going: to meet up with all these friends i had connected with online. and the "cool" and "popular" bloggers? like amalah and sundry and sweetney? it stands to reason that they were also pretty excited to see their friends. so the fact that they gravitated toward people they have connections with, instead of dropping everything to make sure they talked to me or any other random person there? seems kind of... normal. and fair.

and i DID talk to both amalah and sundry, and both were super nice and friendly, although i'm pretty sure i scared sundry into thinking my entire family was a group of stalker serial killers who might come try to eat her babies, so, uh, whoops. and she was STILL NICE TO ME. when not fleeing, i mean.

there has also been a lot said about The Swag. now, i realize you shouldn't go to the conferences SPECIFICALLY to pick up swag? and i had NO IDEA how MUCH swag this was going to entail. but, uh, i'm kind of a sucker for free stuff, so i can't say i MINDED being handed freebies left and right. however? people were not kidding when they suggested bringing an extra bag, JUST FOR THE STUFF:

that there on the left is my suitcase, and that pile o' crap on the right is the swag. and this is the i-just-walked-in-and-they-handed-me-this swag, not the elbow-babies-out-of-the-way swag. and, uh, some of it's really pretty cool.

i do have a bunch of thoughts on the weekend that may make it out here at some point, but for now... pseudostoops said it very well: the conference is what you made of it. if you were looking for cliques and shallowness and horrible sessions, i'm sure they were easy to find. but if you were looking for a really great weekend meeting women you've been connected with because of the pretty darn awesome thing we call blogging? that was also there for the taking.