I cannot believe I didn’t finish my blissdom updates.  I’ve been really sick, and I want to catch up.  So now, we’ll just have to have Friday & Saturday smushed together and just mention the highlights.

I finally met Deanna.  We’ve been corresponding online for years.  YEARS.  But I didn’t know who she was.  I just stared at her, ’cause she looks just like someone from my old work.  The synapses in my brain were misfiring.  Anyway – she introduced herself.  She thinks I’m sweet.  heh.  And she MIGHT be helping me with the site a little bit.  A little bit of refining, let’s say.

I met and saw a whole bunch of people.  People that I needed to meet, that I wanted to meet, and folks who were new to me, as I didn’t follow their blogs.  All of it was wonderful.  I even got to squish a baby girl, which was bliss.  I’m not going to list everyone – ’cause it’s DAYS later and I’ll forget someone and hurt their feelings.  Which I know how that is, so I don’t want to do it.

The swag was fabulous.  Especially the bag – it was a GREAT bag.  No blazing logo, and really sturdy (Land’s End.)

I finally ditched my laptop in my room.  It was great in my room as a setup, but I think it might be time for an iphone or blackberry.

The sessions were really helpful.  I followed the Maven track.  I really got a lot out of them.  I wrote down good ideas to follow up on in the future.

Of course, I had to pause in my blogging conference goodness to take care of a baseball issue for Joseph.  Remotely.  Because it never stops.

I ended up skipping Friday’s cocktail party.  I was people overloaded for one.  I was really tired from not sleeping well on Thursday.  I did NOT want to dress properly.  I didn’t want to make nice or be somewhere loud.  So I took a nap in my room.  I slept better in that hour than the whole of Thursday night.

I got into my moo-cow jammies and hit up the pajama party.  Watched Mamma Mia.  Has to be the cheesiest movie ever – however I loved it, so what does that say about me?

All of Friday and I still had yet to take a picture.

Saturday was a huge day for me.  Huge.

The sessions were great.  The presentation of Yanni Voices was great…  As well as those beautiful men who were there for questions after.

In the session on PR, there was an announcement that Wal-Mart was going to sponsor two people to go to SXSW.  I entered the contest on a break between sessions.  The becomes important later.

If there was a complaint to be had – I’d say that it was the customer service of the hotel in terms of food.  I truly believe that the hotel had no idea WHAT to do with all of us.   So – I had lunch on Saturday – grabbing and going to the next session, ’cause I had to wait for the whole lunch break in line for the food, since they ran out.

After skipping the last session on getting published – that’s when I was writing my angsty post in my room – I did attend the Chris Mann concert.  His music was great, yes.  But he made it a lot of fun.  He actually took the time to research who we are, and what this conference was about.  He was making twitter jokes, and pausing between songs to read the tweets about his performance.  He actually connected with us – made an effort – and that was really impressive to me.

Jen Lancaster was the keynote speaker.  Which of course was great.  And I was able to meet her as she’s friends with Deanna, so that was a lot of fun.  Deanna and I will probably go to her next book signing in the L.A. area and meet up.

Also during the day, I met up with White Trash Mom.  Dude.  She reads me – how cool is that?  We talked about some business she might like to do with me (?!) and parted ways.  I can’t even tell you how excited I was about that.

I went to the cocktail party that night, but did NOT dress up.  Probably an etiquette faux pas, but had I gone back to the room, I would not have come back down, and I knew it.  I had two Blisstinis – which were actually quite good for this total lightweight.  Watched some karaoke and the electric slide.  No – I didn’t dance – we didn’t want anyone injured.  I was at the bar trying to get a drink when Christine was pointing to me and pantomiming “I need to talk to you!”  I don’t know her, and was first introduced to her blog  in a panel I watched, so  I did the whole look around thing and pointed to myself, “Me?”  “Yes you!”  Okie dokie.  I slowly made my way around to the other side of the bar, at which point she informed me that I had won one of the trips to SXSW!  ME!  I was floored.  And then immediately went outside and called Poe.  Can you imagine a better place to pass my business card around?

I called it a night soon after that.  I had my morning flight home the next day.

All in all?  I will SO go next year if I can budget for it.  It was worth it in information, it was worth it in reinforcing some existing friendships, and it was worth it in terms of networking.  Awesome.

Unfortunately, these are the ONLY two pictures I managed to take the entire weekend.  BAD BAD BLOGGER.

Vintage Squirrel (who was gracious enough to have lunch with me on Friday) and I.

VDog and Tanis.  Trust me to make sure that one of the only two pictures I take has boob grabbing involved.