I left off my last post having crawled into bed at about 12:30 AM after Thursday’s FOUR parties in one night. Now, I went to BlogHer this year as a volunteer, my title was “Bookstore wrangler”. The person who carries the microphone during sessions is called the Mic wrangler, the person who oversees all the volunteers is the Volunteer wrangler, etc. Because I had been working for a little over a month helping get the books ordered from Barnes & Noble and emailing the authors answering their questions, I thought I was supposed to spend most of Friday and Saturday in the BlogHer bookstore.

So I set the alarm clock for SIX AM Friday morning, took a shower, stumbled downstairs to the Westin lobby where they had a company called Caruso’s selling coffee drinks and delicious pastries, grabbed a ginormous Mocha and a Chocolate Nutella croissant OMG, and went into the bookstore. I chatted with the iRobot people who were setting up Roomba demos and once Terri from B&N and the boxes of books arrived, I got to work helping her unpack all the boxes and set out the books.

Before I knew it, it was noon and time for our first book signing. After weeks of emails with the authors, looking at their book titles and their names dozens of times in the spreadsheets, I came to think of each of them as “my” authors. I asked each of them to pose for a photo with me and they all kindly obliged, plus I snapped photos of each of them signing a book. First to sign was Anna Post, the great-great-granddaughter of Manners Maven Emily Post, the whole family writes books about manners! Anna signed her book, “Emily Post’s Wedding Parties”, plus other titles from the Post family. Anna was wonderful, and after I told her that Kaitlyn’s idea of sharing was to say “give me that, now we sharing”, she kindly gave me a copy of “Emily’s Sharing and Caring Book“-let’s hope it helps! lol Signing books alongside Anna was Mona Gable who contributed to the book “The Maternal Is Political: Women Writers at the Intersection of Motherhood and Social Change”.

My other author signings that day were Claire Mysko who wrote a book called “Girls Inc. Presents: You’re Amazing!: A No-Pressure Guide to Being Your Best Self”-Claire was so enthusiastic about her book signing! She gave me her cell number and when a lady purchased her book and asked about getting it signed, I called Claire and helped the two of them meet up! Along with Claire I had Suzanne Reisman, who blogs at Cuss and Other Rants, signing her book “Off the Beaten (Subway) Track”. She had a great turnout! Right after them were Jennifer Graf Groneberg who wrote “Road Map to Holland: How I Found My Way Through My Son’s First Two Years With Down Syndrome”, and Vicki Forman who contributed to “Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs”.

SO. At that point, Elisa Camahort came into the room to see how I was doing. When I told her I had been there since 7 AM, she said “no, no! You don’t need to STAY in here! You just need to be here during the book signings! Haven’t you gone to any sessions or anything?” Oh. Um. OH.

So I left and walked through the exhibit hall, I wrote a lot about the products I saw on http://momreviews.net if you want a more detailed description. There were great exhibits from Picnik, PBS Kids, Sprout, V-Tech, Leapfrog, HP TouchSmart, and a whole lot more! Anna Post was not just there to sign books, she was also there working with one of the exhibitors, Merci Chocolates! They were giving out one pound boxes of chocolate to everyone, oh YEAH. I’ll be writing more about their National Thank You Day, and the contest that Merci is having.

After that, I went to the Sesame Street Suite! I met Abby Cadabby and Grover! I could have recorded a little video with one of them, but the spots were filling up and I had so much on my mind I completely forgot to go back. But I did chat with Abby and her lovely puppeteer, and found out from Grover’s puppeteer that he learned the voice of Grover from Frank Oz himself! I could have just camped out for hours in that room, they had milk and cupcakes, tootsie rolls, Sesame Street episodes on the TV-it was like a little room in heaven.

But, soon I had to go back for my last signing of the day, with Lisa Witter, author of “The She Spot: Why Women Are the Market for Changing the World — And How to Reach Them”, and Diane MacEachern, who wrote “Big Green Purse: Use Your Spending Power to Create a Cleaner, Greener World”. After that last signing, I tried to go to the Community Keynote, which had bloggers reading their best posts on stage. I tried, but I was just so darn exhausted, and I still had two parties!

I popped up to my room, freshened up, then Dana, Lori, and Christina (A Mommy Story) and I headed out to the cocktail reception at Ruby Skye, which was just around the corner from the hotel. It’s beautiful inside, and there was food and drinks and music to dance to. I was grateful for the pasta bar, I was starving! AND, in one corner of the club, they had set up the “TNT Drama Lounge”, because the party was sponsored by TNT and the shows “Saving Grace” and “The Closer”. I got to meet Gina Ravera, who plays Detective Irene Daniels on “The Closer”, and she was amazing!

We talked for a long time about her life as an actress, and how much she loves going out and meeting people. You know what was interesting? When we were posing for the photo, the guy taking photos kept saying no, your eyes were closed and no, the light is wrong and then Gina, ever the actress, turned to him and said “tell me what you need from me. What do you need me to do?” It was such an actor moment! She was sweet. They gave out bottles of “Closer Red” nail polish and really pretty little clocks, too.

After Ruby Skye, a bunch of us piled into cabs and headed over to Maggie Mason’s Mighty Haus Launch Party. Maggie and her husband Brian did such a great job with the party! The logo for Mighty Haus is a key in an orange box, so everything at the party was ORANGE. There were bowls of Cheetos, Goldfish crackers, Reese’s sticks and cups-fun! Everyone got to choose a small key on a thread to wear as a necklace, and there was nice wine and unique sodas to drink. I would have taken a lot more photos, but I FORGOT to reformat my camera card and didn’t have any room left! GAH! There are a bunch on Flickr though, search for the tag mightyhaus.

I also got to meet Heather Armstrong, who has the most charming Southern manners, beautiful hair and clothes, and is about six feet tall PLUS she wears heels. There’s a hilarious photo of us on Flickr that I’m still looking for, she is standing behind me and I guess I thought she was going to grab me or something because I’m like shrieking with laughter and my mouth is WIDE open-not really that attractive but still funny. The party was at the Adaptive Path offices which were about six blocks (?) from the hotel. When I was ready to go, I walked out with three other bloggers thinking we would either a. flag down a passing cab or b. call the phone number on the card the cab driver had given us, the card that read “WE ALWAYS ANSWER THE PHONE”.

So there I am with Genie and Secret Agent Josephine and another blogger whose name I can’t remember (sorry!), walking down 3rd Street, thinking if we just keep walking, eventually a cab will stop. Genie is very tall and she was waving her arms and jumping up and down, and still, no cab would stop. SAJ pulled out that cab driver card and called the number on it. “WE ALWAYS ANSWER THE PHONE” turned out to mean “The phone will ring a billion times but no one will answer”. We called the Yellow Cab number (333-3333), they HUNG UP on SAJ. We just kept walking, me getting more and more freaked out because here I am with my purse and my huge camera walking down unfamiliar streets with people I don’t really know, and all I want is to get in a freaking cab already.

Do you know where we ended up? AT&T PARK. We walked all the way to the baseball stadium before we finally flagged down a cab and threw ourselves in it. Oh, did I mention the man I passed pushing a shopping cart with a sign that read “SMOKED A GIANT DOOBIE, HAVE THE MUNCHIES, PLEASE HELP”? Awesome.

And THAT, my friends, was FRIDAY at BlogHer. It was just as exhausting to do as you might think from reading about it! And I still have to recap SATURDAY and SUNDAY! I know we are heading into the weekend when most people don’t read blogs, but I leave for Cincinnati on Monday so I have to get this done. Please say you’ll check in over the weekend and read, and leave comments? kthxbai!