Congratulations to Lori, aka A Cowboy’s Wife (she also writes at My Wooden Spoon) for winning the BlogHer Giveaway!

I hope Lori has a fantastic time, and I’ve made her swear to drink for me (hope she realizes how much this liver of mine can tolerate…tee hee).

It was VERY hard not to pick everyone, which is why I did this contest based on random numbers and NOT based on who deserves it the most. That would have been impossible. Hopefully, my pretties, we can ALL go to BlogHer next year.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, BlogHer

Enjoy the rest of your holiday weekend!

As Miss Zoot said earlier today, “I may be a bleeding heart liberal - but I’m also quite patriotic.” (I really hope I’m quoting from another blogger correctly, I’m still pretty new to this, and I don’t want to offend peeps…I’m attributing enough credit, right? I also left a comment on her post about quoting her?)

Sometimes I just have to laugh at myself, because I am such a liberal. I often get very jaded and sarcastic about our country: the new spying laws, gun control bills, racial profiling, waterboarding, etc…But really? It’s a great place to live. Especially now that there are only 199 days left of Bush Rule (under the 200 mark! SWEET!)

JS and I spent a lovely afternoon at Del Mar Beach (thanks, Google Images!). It was an odd day, weather wise. Not overcast, per se, but foggy. Very foggy. Yet still nice and warm. Later in the day, the fog burnt off, but it gave the beach a mysterious and hidden quality to it (even though it was jam packed with people). Normally, my IA self doesn’t like to be near so many people, but today, it was totally fine. I’m sure a lot of it has to do with the recent No Alcohol on Beaches rule, but everyone was just there to have a good time. There were tons of families - including, of course, dozens of babies in cute diaper ruffle swim suites and sailor hats. I think it also helps that Del Mar is more of a “yuppie” or “country club” sort of atmosphere. All the people who want to get drunk and rowdy tend to head to PB (don’t let the website fool ya, PB is a very, very scary place).

ANYWAY, the point of this post was to give you more videos! Which, apparently WordPress does not want me to share with you because the code keeps getting jacked up and messing up the blog. It’s too late to keep going at it, so I quit. Sorry to leave you videoless. You can see them on YouTube.

PS, It’s not too late to enter in my amazing BlogHer giveaway! Simply leave a comment on this post before midnight tonight to win!

Yeah, well, SO DO I!

But, alas, I cannot. I was so thrilled, ecstatic, even, to go and meet some of my new online friends, as well as the people I’ve been stalking reading for years now (before I even knew what a blog really was) - to learn how to brand my blog and gain readers and write more gooder-er. So when my Lovely and Wonderful Boss gave me permission to go for Professional Development, I signed up before studying the dates carefully. Note to self: ALWAYS LOOK AT THE DATES. (It’s sort of like the time I took the GRE. I knew it was January 28th. I had that date set in my head, labeled as GRE. So when a friend asked me to go hiking with her the last weekend of January, I said, FUCK YEAH. I was halfway there when I realized OHMYGODIHAZABIGTESTRIGHTNOW!!!!!!!! Then I was 12 minutes late and broke into stress hives. I still scored very well in verbal, perfectly in writing, and and humiliatingly poorly in math.)

What was I talking about? Oh, right, BlogHer. So, anyhoodle, I booked the flight, hotel, and registration, and a few weeks later I realized, well, SHI-IT. This happens to conflict with the Commencement, the biggest event of my job. There’s no way to get out of it, at all, especially not with the potential promotion in the air. BlogHer registration is nonrefundable; since my company paid for the registration, and I’ve explained to them that I cannot cancel and get a refund, I got permission to give it away.

So, to any of you who missed registration, or who thought you couldn’t afford the conference, this is your chance. Between now and Friday, July 4th, at midnight Pacific time (aka, the BEST TIME), leave me a comment about why you want to go to BlogHer and what your blog is about (just a logline, so to speak, 1-2 sentences). I will not be judging based on your comments (mostly, I want to start reading more blogs). I’ll have JS pick a number at random (1 through how ever many comments I get) and that will be the winner. The winner will receive one BlogHer Full Conference Pass, as well as 3 nights ( July 17-20) at the Westin St. Francis (which looks fabulous; I covet your wonderful pillow top experience). All you will have to purchase is the airfare to San Fransisco.

Yes, I said “all you will have to purchase is the airfare.” I will transfer the registration and hotel to the winner’s name, BUT, I will also stipulate to the hotel that any room charges will be incurred at the winner’s expense (my company is NOT so gracious to pay for your tequila bath, sorry).

This is over $1,000 of a prize. For leaving a comment. Don’t be shy.

One other condition I am going to make (just on the fly like that, cause I can - its my blog!), is that you do some small giveaway on your own blog. It can be very small, and you don’t have to spend lots of money: homemade cookies, note cards, an Amazon Credit, whatever. Just do some sort of giveaway on your blog to make your readers feel happy (and if they’re chocolate chip cookies, you better send some to my ever expanding ass).

Ready? Set? COMMENT!

Technorati Tags: BlogHer, Giveaway, Blogging

For a while, I was very very anal about being anonymous in the Land-o-Blog. I was skeert of people finding out who I was, that it might make me less candid in my writing. Or that my mom would find out that I swear, or something.

I’m sorta getting over that. For one, I don’t have a ton of readers. I know that can change, and I’d be thrilled if it did, but still. I don’t have hundreds of people checking my site daily. Also, there’s the fact that I told a lot of my friends about the blog which kinda defeated the whole point of being Unknown.

So, anyway, now I’ve added my blog to my Facebook page, which takes away even that last shred of anonymity. I’m pretty OK with that; I don’t list my address or phone number there, either. It just means that my old college roomies are more likely to realize what a “backslider” I’ve become. It was bound to happen, sooner or later. Maybe some of them have done 180’s since freshman indoctrination orientation, too!

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Facebook

I don’t post as often as I should, or even as often as I like. I’m frequently too scared to comment on other people’s blogs because I feel like I’m not “cool enough.” Sometimes I agonize for hours, or even days, on how a certain post “sounds” because I don’t want to come off the wrong way.

But the thing is? I love blogging. I love keeping a “journal” about my life, only one that’s open to the public and not one I keep hidden under the maxi-pad box in the bathroom (the only place my brothers were too freaked out to search for torturing fodder). I love reading blogs. When I’ve gone a few days without reading my favorite blogs, I devour them like a high school boy eats after football practice.

The past few days, I’ve been obsessively reading finslippy, checking to see if Alice has written anything else about her recent miscarriage struggles.  It’s not (I hope) a creepy stalker thing. It’s more of a “Oh my God, someone else gets this feeling” thing. Which is simultaneously wonderful and horrible. What she wrote today, about people saying the wrong thing, no matter what their intentions, is like verbatim from my brain. I know people don’t mean to be unkind, or to make me feel worse, but saying something like “it’s all for the best,” or, “you’ll have more babies,” or, “now you can have one you want,” only serves to bring out a rage that threatens to swallow me whole.

So it’s nice to know I’m not the only one who feels this way. I try telling myself these things (well, save for the last one, because, dude, come one, that’s NEVER a good thing to say), in hopes of keeping myself sane (sometimes it actually helps, too…shocker!), but I don’t want anyone else to say them. Ever.

And that’s probably one of the greatest things about this blogging generation we’re in. It’s so easy to find a community. To find an ally in a bad situation. To read someone else’s story and know that you’re not alone. Not really, anyway.  And that makes it so worth the effort and time of trying to think of something to write about on a semi regular basis.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Miscarriage