I really had no idea what to expect from BlogHer’12 other than a lot of estrogen and a backbreaking amount of swag. My house is now stocked up on Zicam until the apocalypse and I can now lug home ten bags worth of groceries in reusable bags (not like I can actually carry ten bags worth of groceries at once… but you know…) and apparently I’m going to be buying Quilted Northern for awhile because I got coupons.

I’m not the kind of person who agonizes over the schedule before hand and has everything all picked out before I go, I’m very much a “I make decisions of what I want to see in the moment” sort of person, and I have the attention span of about two sessions before my brain melts and starts to runs out my ear, which kinda sort of happened, I’m currently missing the evening festivities because halfway through the closing statements I felt the symptoms of a migraine coming on and that was my third session of the day. I basically look at the schedule just to see what sessions are going on in the morning to figure out what time I have to roll out of bed to make it to the first one I actually give a shit about.

Because the organizers of BlogHer’12 are cruel, they put Erotica Out in the Open in the first session slot which was really the only session the only session on the entire schedule that screamed, “Come!” So, I rolled out of bed about five hours before what’s appropriate on a Saturday to go see Twanna Hines (Funky Brown Chick), Arielle Loren (Corset Magazine), Lauren Fleming (Queerie Bradshaw) and Sienna Jae Fein (Dating Senior Men) take the stage and do a fantastic panel about writing about sex which I obviously should have taken more notes about other than “write more about sex” because pretty much all I remember right now is that I was excited and that it was awesome and that someone in the audience with very curly multicolored hair mentioned Band Back Together.

Also, that’s where I found Jenn of Jenn.nu who was on my short list of people that I wanted to find and say “Hi” to. I figured she’d be the easiest to find… with the bright pink hair and all.

Actually, come to think of it… the ONLY people I ACTUALLY FOUND who were on my short list of people to find and say hi to possessed bright pink hair because the other person I found was Cecily Kellogg of Uppercase Woman. We exchanged a moment where we tried on each others cat eye glasses.

I had lunch with a table of random ladies which included Sherry from City Chic on a Farm (a mother of three boys who moved from the suburbs of Cincinnati to a farm in Indiana), Jacqueline of Frugal Flip (a personal finance blogger from Los Angeles).

I made it about five minutes into the keynote with Katie Couric before I started feeling kinda disgusted that the table of women I was sitting at seemed so impressed to be in the same room as a television personality and started having fantasies about stripping off my dress and streaking across the conference hall screaming “TELEVISION IS DEAD! LONG LIVE THE INTERNET!” but I figured that might be the sort of crazy activity that might get me kicked out… Plus I hadn’t the forsight to write my blog address and Twitter handle in lipstick on my naked body. However, I think it would have been a good stunt. At that point, I thought it best to go back and get free shit from corporations instead of listening to an interview with a corporate personality.

No, no. I’m not bitter. Not one bit.

After that, I decided to go check out one of the little writing lab workshops, and ended up at Effective Sex & Erotica with AV Flox and talked about the impact of Fifty Shades of Grey (which no one had actually read) and sex work and did a little writing prompt starting with “She walked into a dark room…” There I met the lovely Dead Cow Girl a dominatrix mommy blogger and Classic NYC Story, an absolutely fabulous fellow NYC blogger.

After that, I should have had the good sense to go home and take a nap… but I wandered around aimlessly until the closing session which I left halfway through because a migraine set in… which is why I’m blogging right now instead of being drunk at a party, which kinda sucks because I feel like I got the hangover without the drinks. What’s up with that?

Tomorrow… adventures in the swag bag. Peace, y’all.