Blogger Breakfast

This morning, I stopped at the concierge’s desk for duct tape, taped my "I BLOG" sign to the only rigid object I had handy, which was a comb, and then stood in the hotel lobby holding the sign in the air. (I realize this was not the best way to keep my blog a secret, but I thought the 8:30 am time slot made it safe. One colleague did come wandering through to ask curiously, "Uh, what are you doing?" But then she shrugged and went on her way. See, having the reputation for being weird does have its advantages.)

The sign worked, and soon I was surrounded by a group of women, who had never met each other before but who nonetheless all tried to politely introduce each other each time a new person arrived. That simple act of etiquette, of course, is way more difficult than it sounds. It’s not just a matter of matching the right name to the right face. You have to match the real name to the right pseudonym, which is often different than the name of the blog, and then match that to the right person. It can all get silly quickly. One woman said to me, "Oh, I think I saw you last night. I recognized the back of your head as you got off the elevator."

The cool part is that every blogger I met was what I expected. How satisfying it was to eat a long breakfast with a group of warm, friendly, smart, beautiful, articulate women. Timna. Susan. Marcia. Deb. Angela. Starfish and Coffee. I had been hoping, actually, that at least one person would do something rude or bizarre so that I would have something funny to write about, but no such luck. We were too busy laughing and talking, and finding out the stories behind the blogs.