going to half of BlogHer, but still hoping

As I am friends with an amazing guy (who knows everyone and everything - especially about music!) who went way beyond the call of duty to get me into BlogHer, I have now secured a pass to Day 1 of BlogHer! w00t!!!

This means I do get to go to the Newbie Party tonight. I even went out on a limb, hoping against hope, and last night I got a great new haircut and style for the occasion, so I'm glad something panned out, last-minute or not. There will be pictures from the party tonight.

So tomorrow I'll be at BlogHer. And if you hear of any Saturday passes, send them my way. I mean, seriously folks, it's my chance to meet Maggie (mightygirl) AND Heather (dooce)!!! That's like two life-long dreams rolled into one!

I'll keep you posted!

BlogHer 08 - i'm too late!!!

One of the reasons I moved to SF, even to the Bay Area in general, was for events like BlogHer. (Specifically, Adaptive Path events and BlogHer.) When I found out BlogHer 08 was being held in downtown SF this year I was overjoyed!!! They didn't have their whole line-up of speakers together though, and our summer plans were a little up in the air, so I didn't register right away.

WRONG!!!

On Monday morning, I woke up with a start, early, thinking, "OMG! BlogHer is coming up! I never went back to register!!!" I jumped out of bed, pulled up the site, saw that it starts on the 18th (!!! I thought it was later!), frantically clicked the register button, my heart skipping along in relief, and got a page telling me it's sold out. I added my name to the waitlist, hopelessly, and then proceeded to mentally berate and kick myself until I ruined my own day.

You see, I had missed the tiny text at the top of the register page telling me "This event is closed for registration." I wanted to scream! Some of my very favorite bloggers will be there, as speakers or as attendees, and being the introvert that I am, I had made a solemn resolution that I would come out of my shell for this.

The long and the short of it is that if you know someone who knows someone whose uncle's plumber's accountant's daughter-in-law can get me in at this point, I will be indebted to you forever. I will paint the toenails of every single person in that chain. I will send a sincere thank you note to them and do a jig!!! I would sing karaoke for you. (*gasp!*) A hush just fell over the crowd because if you know me, you know I don't do karaoke for no one, no how. This is serious.

So I plead to my possibly 11 readers in the whole wide world: "Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope!"

new favorite quote ever

People say Valleywag will stab you in the back. That's a lie. Valleywag will stab you in the face.

From Where to put your plea for press coverage.

antiques by the tundra

Shannon and I headed out to Antiques by the Bay in Alameda at 6am this morning. We were all bundled up in layers, and felt well-prepared. We got there around 6:45am, and got parking right up front, which is pretty unusual for the antique fair. That should have been our first clue that this wouldn't go well.

The second clue was that there wasn't anyone selling tickets; we just walked right in. This place is usually chock full of vendors as far as the eye can see, and today there were only 3 rows of vendors. And most of them were still unloading or had barely started.

It was very windy, and the cold was a bit finger-numbing. We went through all the tables pretty quickly, not seeing anything that really spoke to us. We made our way back to the front, and as we were taking a second look at some things and commenting about how cold and windy it was, Shannon said the unspeakable: "It could be worse. It could be raining."

Literally on cue, it started sprinkling lightly, and then the sprinkle started getting heavier and the wind picked up even more. The vendors were scrambling to cover their wares or put it back in their trucks. I pulled out our umbrella, which felt pretty useless, and we decided to call it a day. The killer part is that we got back to the city and it was just after 8am. 8am, people!!! What the hell were we thinking?!?

I'm trying to resist going back to bed, but I think the urge to sleep (in my warm, warm bed) is going to win.

what are you doing tonight?

Oh, I don't know... We're going to THIS!

ad-rock, mca, and me, mike d!

beastie boys: the feel of the bass in your face in the crowd, originally uploaded by ashleyv.

We went to see the Beastie Boys at Berkeley's Greek Theatre last night, and ... words fail me. There is not much I can say to express to you how unbelievably incredible this show was. I've never been to a Beastie Boys show before, so I had high expectations going in. And they blew those away. The energy of those 3 on stage was electric, and Mix Master Mike is AMAZING. They played every song I wanted to hear. And they kicked ass! I will go see them every chance I get.

IxDA in SF

IxDA (Interaction Design Association) San Francisco held it's first speaker session last night, "Communicating Concepts with Comics" by Kevin Cheng, of the hilarious OK/Cancel comic strip/blog and Yahoo!. It was a good presentation, and I'll have to think about how/if I can incorporate it into my process. As someone who considers themselves an "artist", it is unendingly frustrating for me to suck at drawing people and faces. It would take some practice and probably a WACOM tablet, and much patience (and we all know how patient I am...)

After the presentation, we met up with the G-UX/SF crowd at Velvet Cantina for yummy nachos and rather crappy margaritas. It was fun to see all those folks outside of work. We don't do it very often, and it's one of the big things I miss from life in San Antonio. (Then again, I don't know how much of that was socializing and how much was work driving us to drink.) I am really looking forward to Aaron & Shannon getting here to regain some of that after work camaraderie. Anyways, two measly cheap tequila margaritas, and I've got a nasty headache this morning. I missed the kinda-late shuttle so now I'm on the late shuttle. (At least I'm not taking the late-LATE shuttle.) Which is OK; I'll take the later shuttle home, because as I discovered after the Google Dance the other night, the later evening shuttles are faster and way less crowded.

full weekend

Today is the G summer picnic, over at Shoreline Amphitheatre - I'm getting ready to head over there as I blog. Tonight we're going to the Dark Matters Opening Night Party at Yerba Buena. Tomorrow night we're going to the Laughing Squid: Paradise Lost party. (Even though SFPD has canceled the Flaming Lotus Girls performance (bastards). Oh, gosh. There is just too much going on to even list here. Good times. Good times.

fire arts festival was wicked cool

It took me forever to finally get around to uploading the photos, and now I'm finally getting around to blogging about it...

We went across the bay to Oakland to see the festival, put on by The Crucible. I love public transportation here - we just hopped the bus up to the BART, and then took the BART under the bay to Oakland. The stop was literally a block from the event.



The Fire Arts Festival was an entire city block transformed into a fire theatre. There were enormous interactive fire installations, and fire sculptures, and fire machines. There was "Dance, Dance Immolation" - where you get into an enormous fire suit and do DDR but if you get the moves wrong you get engulfed in flames. I did not try this. The team from SRL was there with some color-changing fire robots and mechanical fire stuff I can't even describe. The whole festival was essentially my two favorite things; metal sculpture and big fire. (Oh yeah, and there was this big production in the middle that was a play called the Fire Odyssey, which is better left not even talking about. There is not enough beer in the world...)

The whole thing is better said in pictures, anyways.