Category: BlogHer

Tomorrow I leave for the BlogHer Conference in San Jose, where I will be meeting lots of people and handing out my blog business card right and left. With that in mind, I figured this would be a good time for a little "who am I?" rundown.

First my BlogHer history: I was at the very first BlogHer Conference in 2005. Also at the next six, if you need that bit of trivia. For various reasons I missed the last two years, but I'm back to see how they're going to celebrate the 10th anniversary.

I don't have a photo of myself from the first year because for some reason I confined most of my picture-taking to my tour of the Winchester Mystery House with Cagey. So here's what I looked like at the 2009 conference. That's Liz Rizzo on the left and me on the right, back when I had black hair with blue streaks in it.

 

In my professional life I do content marketing, which is a fancy way of saying I write for the web and run social media programs. So, pretty much the same as what I'm doing here except for the whole salary thing. You don't need to see a picture of that. It's just a plain old cubicle.

In my spare time, I sing in a rock band. This photo was taken last weekend, so if you're looking for me at the conference, that's what my hair looks like now. I'll probably leave the skull sweater at home, though. It hasn't made it out of my gig bag and into the laundry yet.

I also spend significant amounts of my free time playing geeky board games. Here's one of my main gaming group's favorites. We have a fancier Battlestar Galactica setup now, but this was from early on.

I aspire to get in better shape, although I'm pretty sure it's safe to say I'll never be a runner. Yoga is really more my speed, but I'm not too great about keeping up with classes. Look how optimistic I am before I start a 5k! Yes, I walked most of it. Incidentally, I live in the Central time zone, so if you also get up early and want to take a walk some morning during the conference, I'm in.

I have pets. Oh, yes I do. Would you like to meet them? Of course you would! Here there are in the order in which they came to live with us. First we have Xena, my husband's kitteh wife.

Velvet is our oldest cat and a big fan of sitting in my lap.

Trillian, the snapping tortie. Sweeter than she looks, when she wants to be. Otherwise, hands off!

Dr. Jones is my lazy tabby and our only male cat. He's really not as lazy as all that; he likes to play fetch with his favorite toy mousie.

What is this? Yes, a dog! We have one dog, Toby the Italian Greyhound. He's 11 years old (eight when we got him) and down to five teeth, which means his tongue hangs out a lot.

Last but not least is Kaylee, who lives in my husband's recording studio. Did I mention I have a husband? Who runs a recording studio? We'll get back to that.

So on to my husband. We'll be celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary late this year. He's a drummer in addition to being a recording engineer. And he is sometimes very silly.

I'm sure there's more I could tell you, but then what would we talk about at the conference? I'm looking forward to meeting all the new people I've been hanging out with online lately. This is going to be fun!

Today I have a post up at BlogHer.com called The Blog Remains the Same: Things We're Still Concerned With 10 Years Later.

I'm using that as an excuse to post a photo of Robert Plant from "The Song Remains the Same," as an homage to the fact that I tried and failed to make some connection between the post title and Led Zeppelin in early drafts of the post.

Yesterday I decided once and for all that this year I would be skipping the BlogHer Conference for the first time since it began in 2005. I am disappointed beyond all measure, but the hard truth is that I just cannot afford the travel expenses, especially since it's in expensive New York City again.

My husband offered to give me the money for the trip, but honestly it would be better spent repairing things around the house, having Toby and Velvet's teeth cleaned, etc. That doesn't even count the upcoming added expenses we have every summer, such as lawn mowing and higher electric bills.

I love the BlogHer community and every year I look forward to seeing the friends I've made among the bloggers. This year I'll have to content myself with following the action on Twitter.

This isn't the only travel opportunity I'm turning down this year, but I'm fortunate to be able to take a road trip with my husband this spring and I will be attending another blogging conference in the early summer.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that circumstances will allow me to jump back in for BlogHer 2013.

If you're interested in purchasing my BlogHer full conference pass at the early bird cost, email me and we'll talk.

This is my favorite photo from BlogHer. It shows a big group of women in the elevator going from one party to another on Saturday night. Look how giddy everyone seems!

Saturday was the only day I went to any official parties, but once I was committed to the idea of party-hopping, I was in for the duration. I even made it to CheeseburgHer this year, although the Aiming Low party was more my speed (read: I got a free shoulder and neck massage).

Aiming Low is also where I got this "Internets! Hell yea" temporary tattoo that I finally removed ten days later when daily showers and exercise failed to affect its adhesion one iota. Nail polish remover did the trick, though.

One thing I didn't do at the Aiming Low party was let someone write on me. That was a good move as it turns out, because it was a little risky:

I am telling all this way out of order. Let me start over and see if I can get a little more chronological up in here. I arrived on Thursday afternoon after a long travel day. This is what I saw from my hotel window, so I knew I was in for a wonderful trip:

Wouldn't you love to be there right now? I sure would.

So within a few hours I'd gathered my roommates together and we all went down by that beautiful pool to grab a drink and have something to eat. Along the way we met up with lots of other bloggy friends.

Liz Rizzo of Everyday Goddess, a.k.a. Roommate #1

Cagey from Rancid Raves, a.k.a. Roommate #2. I'm willing to bet she got a lot more photos than I did.

Goon Squad Sarah and Suebob of Red Stapler fame. (Suebob is a former BlogHer roommate of mine).

Once we'd snacked and socialized to our hearts' content, we made our way over to the exhibit hall, where we ran into more blogger buddies.

Hanging out with TW and Denise.

As you can see, we had our big bags o' swag from registration. We went back later on that evening for the sneak preview of the Expo Hall. Some of my colleagues were working there so I said hello and made my way around looking at the various sponsors. As is my custom, I entered every iPad giveaway I could find. I did not win an iPad. (However, Liz won an iPad. And a big basket of chocolate. And a fitness basket with lots of dried fruit. I'm not jealous. Really.)

I got up early on Friday morning to do a 5k and ended up walking with Liz and Kim. I downloaded the iMapMyRun app at Kim's suggestion and now I use it every time I walk and it's making me very competitive with myself.

Once the 5k start time of 6:30 a.m. Pacific rolled around, I'd already been up for a couple of hours, discovered that the hotel Starbucks opened at 5:00 a.m., and talked them into making me my Shakeology shake for breakfast. I wouldn't get a shake that actually tasted good until the next day, but at least I managed to establish that they were willing to give it a shot.

Speaking of apps (as we were a couple of paragraphs ago), I used the heck out of the BlogHer app. In fact, it's the only place where I have a record of which sessions I attended and I would love to tell you what they all were but my phone is all the way downstairs and, you know, tired.

So I spent all day in whatever sessions caught my attention, including a couple of invitation-only ones such as a Jimmy Dean cause marketing workshop where they discussed their No Kid Hungry program, and a Pepsico Sofa Summit featuring Sarah Brokaw that netted me an autographed copy of Fortytude that I'm reading right now.

I attended the Voices of the Year Community Keynote, which was wonderful as always.

On Friday evening, I had the good fortune to once again attend the Nintendo Ambassadors' party with Liz, who also managed to get a spot for Cagey. We took a boat cruise to the Hotel del Coronado and had a luau-themed party on the beach.

It was a little chilly out, but we got to sit around fire pits for most of the evening, so that was lovely.

Saturday was lather, rinse, repeat when it came to my getting up early, having Starbucks make me a breakfast shake, etc. I attended sessions all morning except when I was donating blood (which made me miss part of Nerdy Apple Bottom's session, darn it), managed to miss a flash mob at lunchtime because I was too lazy to turn around and figure out what all the commotion was about, and skipped a couple of afternoon sessions in favor of flat-on-my-back-reading time. I got back to the convention center in plenty of time to see the closing keynote, but I had to duck out a little early because I got a tweet that I'd won a prize at the Lindt Chocolate booth in the Expo Hall.

Have you ever seen so much candy? It had to have weighed 20 pounds.

Cagey and I stopped by to visit some of our Missouri blogging pals (and share chocolate) before making our way down to the poolside bar where it turned out that Ricki Lake was holding court and providing ample quantities of free margaritas.

We picked up a fourth roommate for Saturday evening. Siel of Green LA Girl decided not to drive back home that evening, so we added her to our room.

All of my roomies enjoying Ricki Lake's generosity.

The party-hopping I mentioned at the beginning of the post began shortly after that.

Liz Rizzo and Neil Kramer

The Palinode and Schmutzie

That's about the time I stopped taking photos. I don't think I took any at CheeseburgHer, despite the fact that, as predicted, I used exactly ZERO of the ten drink tickets I'd been given. After all, I had just given blood that day.

On Sunday morning I got up early (no surprise there) and got my breakfast shake. While I was hanging around on the main floor of the hotel, I checked the #blogher hashtag feed on Twitter and discovered that there was a Clever Girls Collective tech brunch taking place later that morning that had some slots open. After a couple of emails and a quick check-in with the roommates, I got us all registered.

The brunch was at a boutique hotel not far away and it had some great tech sponsors including Etymotic, PopCap and Logitech. We had really interesting discussions about the future of tech and personal computing. I was very glad I'd spotted the opportunity.

When we got back to the hotel, we had some time to kill before Cagey and I needed to head to the airport. We ran into Georgia from I Am Bossy in the hotel lobby and invited her to accompany us to the bar for a pre-flight cocktail.

At some point I checked the #blogher hashtag again and noticed that a company called Cloudflare was offering free limo rides from the hotel to the airport. We were happy to take advantage of that service in exchange for a brief sales pitch, so I got us lined up to travel to the airport in style.

Then we spent the next 5+ hours at said airport thanks to a flight delay that was never explained to my satisfaction. The less said about that the better, except that we got a chance to hang out with BlogHer co-founder Elisa Camahort Page and her husband Chris Page for a while as we waited, which was lovely.

Cagey is a great traveling companion but I'm pretty sure she was thoroughly sick of me by the time we finally boarded our flight. I will honor that by not posting the obnoxious photo I took of both of us toward the end of our extremely long wait.

We didn't get back to Kansas City until almost 2:30 a.m. on Monday, so you can kind of see why it's taken me two solid weeks to get back on track.

And that is my whole BlogHer story, minus lots of details that would have been a lot clearer if I'd written this when I should have. I'm sure I've failed to mention people and events integral to the actual story, but don't hesitate to comment with stuff I should have included.

Now, on to the next trip and conference!

I'm going to be writing a lot of posts about my BlogHer 2011 experience over the coming week or so, but this is the one that's topmost in my thoughts right now.

It all started with a tweet I saw from Queen of Spain about a blood drive at the conference. I've been an enthusiastic blood donor since college, so I was happy to sign up even though I've been turned down a few times recently due to low hemoglobin. However, my last blood test at the doctor's office showed normal iron levels, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

Well, I almost got turned down, but not due to anemia. Instead, it was because my blood pressure was sky-high.

Now, I've always had blood pressure on the low side of normal. If I stood up too fast in yoga class, I'd often get dizzy. High blood pressure is definitely something new. The tech took my blood pressure twice and I squeaked down into the acceptable range the second time, but she thought it was concerning enough that she wrote down both readings so I could share them with my doctor when I got home.

I then donated blood without incident and got the phlebotomist to take a picture of me and my blood so I could share it on my blog and Twitter, because otherwise what kind of blogger would I be?

I had a pretty good idea that the sudden change in blood pressure was related to one of my medications. It didn't take much research to figure out which one, so I left a message for my doctor, who had her nurse call and tell me to stop taking that one (duh).

I'm actually rather irritated at her for prescribing it in the first place and also irritated at myself for not being a more proactive healthcare consumer when I started taking it. It really wasn't particularly appropriate for the condition for which it was prescribed and it's apparently well known for causing hypertension. Thanks, doc.

So now I'm assuming that my blood pressure will go back to normal. I've been stepping up my exercise and changing my diet quite a bit, so those things alone should help, especially now that I'm not being poisoned by that stupid drug.

I'm very inspired of late to take charge of my health and, ideally, get off most or all of the various medications I'm taking. It may not be a quick process, but it's worth starting immediately. I'd love to get to a point where I feel like a fully healthy person instead of a walking collection of symptoms.

So my post title may be a little hyperbolic, but I'm glad I got the heads-up that something was wrong. I'll talk about the less life-or-death aspects of BlogHer in the rest of my upcoming posts.