Now with photos and embarrassing video! Alright, so it’s not as exciting as all that, but we did have a really good time.

I left San Diego Wednesday at noon on Jet Blue, who despite the bird-flipping, slide-exiting, job-quitting flight attendant’s recent escapades, is a pretty awesome airline. The seats were roomy, I could stretch out my legs completely in front of me, there was free DirecTV (so I timed my entire trip by how many 30 minute Food Network shows I watched) and the snacks were tasty items like Terra Chips instead of crappy peanuts. And the pilot got us there almost 40 minutes before he said he would, so that was nice.

I took a cab into Manhattan from the airport and proceeded to spastically tweet about how to tip the cabbie. I’m an overtipper and standard tipping here is 20% for like, everything, it seems like, so with a $50 cab ride, I was concerned about giving too much. Of course, despite the encouraging 10% recommendations from Twitter, I still overtipped.

We decided to escape the hub-bub of Blogher, we’d stay elsewhere… so we booked ourselves at Empire Hotel. We found out after we made our reservations that it’s Chuck Bass’ hotel in Gossip Girl, which was pretty funny. While the staff and management at Empire were really lovely, the place was a total Monet. It’s much better on TV.  It looks beautiful from a distance, but when you get up close, it’s much shabbier than the marketing implies. We knew it was a vintage building that had been renovated, but how long ago? There was water damage on the walls, the chairs were pretty worn, our rooms had cobwebs in the corners and the beds… oh my god, the beds. It was like sleeping in a mausoleum — hard, hard mattresses.  HARD.  We both were in pain by the end of the trip.

Oh, also? Apparently, the rooftop deck bar is the hot place to be on a Thursday night. There were lines of short skirts around the block to get upstairs.  If they offer you the 11th floor, despite the spectacular views of Lincoln Center, don’t take it. You’ll hear remixes of Lisa Lisa and the Cult Jam and hooker heels on your ceiling until 3:30am (and heat rises, so the hallways were constantly like, Africa Hot, while our rooms were Meat Locker Cold).  Given that we had to be up at 8am for the conference, we sweetly called down to management — I swear! I even made him laugh — and they moved our luggage to the old people’s floor for us the next day and knocked $75 off our bill for two nights. Like I said, great management, mediocre rooms, granite mattresses.  It does have a lovely lobby bar, though.  We called it our Brokedown Palace. With lube.

Thursday, after we had coffee at Starbucks by our hotel and enjoyed the company of a total character we named LoQuatious (who put lipstick on his forehead and exfoliated with a kitchen brush right there in front of us), we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Loved it, gorgeous, amazing, could have spent a week there. I was especially into a Degas I’ve never seen before called The Tub. I just was entranced by it.

Then we set up for the Green Soiree hosted by Safemama and organized by 3 Green Angels.  That was a lovely affair, though I spent most of it hiding in the corner by the open bar.  I’m not a mom, I don’t blog about green topics, so I was just there as support for Kathy — to help. Once the set-up was done, I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. Eventually Sommer came over and gave me friendly crap for being antisocial, so I topped off my wine, mingled and had some stinky cheese. Post-soiree, we ended up at the Hilton bar with Sommer, Alicia and Yvonne, follow by the aforementioned Lisa Lisa incident.

The next day, we hit BlogHer.  First we cruised the expo halls, where we saw Padma from Top Chef, Tamra from Real Housewives of OC and my personal highlight — the Jimmy Dean sun.  We saw him with sun and sans sun downstairs at the elevators.  I can see why they hired him — he’s totally approachable and super nice, even out of costume. I can’t believe I didn’t get a photo.  I did, however, run out of business cards the first day.

After lunch, we hit the bar for a mid-day cocktail before the Blog Design panel, which was one of only two panels we attended. None of the topics grabbed our attention this year. I didn’t feel like there were any panels that spoke to me — the single, non-kid-having, semi-wise ol’ blogging sage, web designer. I think we’ve got marketing down and I don’t need to learn how to build my brand as a blog, really.  We’ve been doing this for a while now. So we used that time for signing books and beer. You know, the important stuff.

The Blog Design panel had some really good information presented by Design*Sponge. We especially enjoyed her encouragement to hire a professional and her candidness about how much it really costs and why it’s important for your blog if you’re trying to build a following or a brand.  She talked about textures and being unique and why consistency among all online outlets is important.  That was good info, presented very well.

The other two speakers — well, the 2nd woman (whose name I can’t recall) had some good info, but overall her pitch felt a little like a downer. I can’t put my finger on it, but there was no practical application in her information, really and while she seemed like a nice woman — she basically just told me boys like lines and girls like colors.  And Alex, the (mostly print?) designer (who I really dug, personally; she was charming and funny) had some inaccurate info and presented it in a kind of scattered way that non-tech people wouldn’t understand. In fact, it seemed like even she wasn’t really sure how to do some of the things she was speaking about because she kept referencing CSS generators and programmer friends who help her.  I think she was a little nervous, but like I said, soooo charming (and pretty cute, I might add), that it almost didn’t matter.

I would’ve liked to have seen a Blog Design panel that really gave bloggers practical tips for good blog design practices and maybe explain a little about what CSS is and why you do what you do with it. Touching on SEO, where to place ads (and what size) and how blog design structure is relevant might have been good, too.  While the blog owner’s perspective on blog design was good (Design*Sponge), it would have been helpful, I think, to have an actual blog design professional on the panel — at least one.

But I digress. We are considering pitching a panel for next year (and asking one or two of our esteemed colleagues to join us). Not that we’ll necessarily do a bang-up job or anything — I get nervous, too — but I think if the whole panel had been more like Design*Sponge’s portion of it, folks would have left with a stronger understanding of their blog’s innards and direction.  I’m just sayin’.

Friday night, after freshening up back at the Brokedown Palace, we hit the Voices of the Year Gala, cashed in a drink ticket or two and then I wasted no time in getting up to do a little live band karaoke.  I’ve sung with a live band, I’ve sung karaoke, but I’ve never done both at the same time. It was really fun!  And surprisingly, I wasn’t even nervous. Then we hit up Ray’s Pizza for my first (and only!) slice of Real New York Pizza™. I was NOT disappointed.

Kathy recorded a snippet of  me singing. You can’t really see me, but you can hear me.

Saturday, after a stroll down to Sephora at The Shops on Columbus Circle, we rolled into BlogHer just in time for lunch, then hit the Fitness Blogging panel, which was nice (though was more of a Q&A and less of a presentation).  It ran a bit long, though, so we snuck out early and went for a little walk. I wasn’t feeling very well, for some reason — the pain in my back, neck and arms from carrying soiree swag bags and sleeping on stone slabs took it’s toll, so we headed back to the hotel, where I laid down for a bit while Kathy dashed off to the Green Affair party.

I met up with her and Statia later, feeling much better and we all got our groove on at the Sparklecorn and CheeseburgHer parties.  Both of which were really fun, though Sparklecorn seemed to have a more elaborate turn-out… at least at first. They had a Charm City Cake, they had great pop culture posters, unicorn glitter and a really good DJ.  CheeseburgHer was a bit more intimate, but did end up overflowing by the end of the night.  The best part (aside from dancing with friends and recording The Robot) was the giant cheeseburger-shaped, Tempurpedic-like bed. Had I spent one more second on that bed, I would have fallen asleep.  Empire Hotel needs cheeseburger beds.

I think we ended up down at the hotel bar again after that, if I recall correctly.  Then back to the hotel, where we both laid awake, complaining to each other about the uncomfortable beds and singing songs about pimps.

Sunday, Kathy was off super early to catch her flight and I spent the morning wandering the area in search of quintessential New York foods I wanted to try. I hit Tasti-D-Lite, where I had two bites of my .99 cent soft serve (overrated!). I had a hot dog off a cart in Columbus Circle (near the Park), which I promptly threw away (gross! gross!), I got a pretzel that I nibbled at the benches in front of Trump Tower, but decided I’d have better luck hammering nails with it (tossed!).  I gave up and decided it was all crap and went back to the hotel to catch a cab.

Bad idea. My 90 degree cab ride to the airport was in stop n’ go traffic so by the time we got to JFK, I ended up hurling in the ladies, pre-boarding.  JFK and I have a special bond now. Then I sat on the tarmac for an hour before take off, though despite leaving almost 90 minutes late, the pilot got us in only 20 minutes late, so… not too terrible. Again, kudos, Jet Blue.

So… there you have it. More information than you ever wanted to know about my first trip to New York and first time at BlogHer. I wasn’t sure if I’d attend again, since the panels are really the part we’re paying for and those didn’t really blow my dress up — but I’ve changed my tune. It’s here in San Diego next year (YAY!) and we might throw our hat in the ring for a blog design panel, if anyone decides they’re interested in attending.  Plus, it’ll be nice to have the home court advantage.

Are you going to BlogHer ’11?  San Diego welcomes you.

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