Dear Reader-Peeps (all 10 of you?),
Tomorrow I get on a plane and go to beautiful San Francisco to attend Blogher ‘08. My first ever.
It’ll be exciting because I get to meet the Women Who Run With the Wolves and Let Me Jog Alongside Them, the MOMocrats. Now that’s nerve-wracking because I have joked and snarked and disagreed and agreed and laughed with these fabulous lay-deez for quite some time now, so to meet them in person will be amazing. (So far I’ve met two in person. And they were every bit as fabu as I believed they’d be.) And yet, I’m as nervous about it as if I’d dated someone online for half a year and now it was time to see who you’ve been talking to and whether he’s 4′2″ with a horn growing from his forehead or something. Only this is more serious, because I’m never breaking up with these broads. Unfortunate unihorn or no.
Will I have halitosis and maybe smeared eyeliner that makes me look like a loon? Will any of them like me after they’ve met me? Worries, worries.
The second exciting thing is that I was invited to speak on a panel about Race and Gender. Now this is also thrilling and wonderful, as I’ve been secretly worshipping Maria Niles (the organizer) from afar for awhile now. I do hope I still merit an “inappropriate” first-time hug from her, even though I stupidly got caught up in trying to explain something to the floor installer guy and missed our pre-scheduled phone meeting to plan the panel. My big worry here is that the panel will be prickly and shouty, and it will all somehow be my fault (because I didn’t call! Guilty, guilty, guilty). I am gripped by pre-oral exam fears as if I were back in graduate school. Should I, uh, be reading up on something, to appear more of an expert? Given that I will be speaking from my own experiences and trying to draw parallels and find common ground, this might be impossible (and not productive) to do.
But I am worried we’ll spend the whole panel talking about the New Yorker cover (here, here, and here and all over the blogosphere), and not about Race and Gender and how we can all move forward together on those. So maybe I’ll post some remarks about what I’d like to talk about on the panel either before or after it. You know, do the bloggy thing, to get a few more words in edgewise. And continue the discussion. And loop in any of you who can’t be there this time, if you’re curious at all.
So, no promises on whether I’ll blog anything from the conference itself. It’ll be feast or famine–either I’ll want to post every little thing and annoy you with TMI, or you won’t hear from me at all.
But back I’ll be on Monday, July 21.
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