I didn’t chicken out. I know! Yay, me! I actually got up this morning, showered, got ready and then I let Kile dump me off at the Hyatt. Woo hoo! Of course, then I nearly went and hid in the bushes. Especially when I couldn’t find my name badge. Yeah, that was fun. But it was under “Lilac Pixels” of all things. Anyhow, I have some pics and some conference gossip to share.

This here is a rest area up at Donner Pass. Isn’t it gorgeous? For being a place where people run to the bathroom and then hop back in their vehicles, I thought it was pretty nice. I walked down to this pond/lake with Harry while Kile finished up feeding Liam. We saw pollywogs and giant dragonflies and it was very cool. We could have happily spent the rest of the day there. And not JUST because I was starting to feel ill about the whole conference thing.

After we stopped for lunch, we decided to shake things up and had Harry sit in the “way back” while I sat in the second row and pumped and kept an eye on the wee one. Kile kept going on and on about how scortched everything looked. But I tried to tell him that California turns yellow/brown every summer regardless of monstrous heat waves. He was very nervous about the heat but it turned out to be a non-issue as the temperature dropped the closer we got to San Jose. Woo!

So somehow I made it to the conference this morning. And I started to panic pretty hard after I got here. And someone took a picture of my sandals. I wasn’t recognizing anyone and I felt so out of place and pretty sure that I was in FAR over my head. But then I spotted Zoot and got to know Brit (who is totally awesome and let me pump in her hotel room) and started to feel MUCH MUCH better. So that pic is of the three BlogHer founder/gurus welcoming us to the conference. We, rebels that we are, are sitting at the WAY back of the room. Woo!

I went ahead and attended the “Blog in a Box” session first, since Zoot was presenting and I wanted to be all supportive and such. She did FANTASTIC and was by far the best of the three presenters. I’m so not even being biased here. She was funny, interesting and was really giving out information that people could use and find helpful. She’s a total rockstar, and has been interviewed already just for being awesome. I got to help out a little in the session, being a bit of a WordPress guru which was cool. Oh, and getting to meet Zoot in person? So cool. She’s such a nice person, and has the most delightful accent. She was very nervous for her presentation but you totally couldn’t tell it because she’s cool as a cucumber.

Also, around this time, I decided I was thirsty and there was this vendor set up out in the lobby shilling their super-duper mineral water so heck, why not?? Well I’ll tell you why not: It SUCKS. It has since occurred to me that maybe my dissing of the water is a little extreme since it’s entirely possible that it was NERVES that were making me want to hurl, but its far more fun to blame the nasty water. From FRANCE no less. It’s awful. Just awful. Don’t drink it, I swear to you, you’ll regret it.

And that brings us to lunch. Where we ate outdoors because, dang we’d been inside ALL day long. And Zoot had LilZ and NikkiZ with her (which, both are ADORABLE and even cuter than their pictures) so that was fun and totally cool. I had a baked potato and some fried chicken and dropped my fork TWICE. Hello?? Total dork here. At least it made LilZ giggle. That’s something. I also got to meet Nancy from Mom/Ma’am/Me and she’s totally cool and I was happily that I finally found her.? Even though it was more like she found me. Anyhow. Oh, and Brit kindly let me pump in her hotel room. We actually had sorta a pumping party, which was very fun.

So now we’re cooking on into the afternoon and I’m hot and still too excited so we’ll see how it goes. They only gave us TWO drink tickets for both days. I’m going to need a LOT more alcohol than that.