BloggingDangerously

Age of Aquarius

I have to start this post by saying, "THANK YOU" to all of you for the positive thoughts, comments, tweets, etc. on Friday. Not only did reading them all make possible for me not to VOMIT while I was waiting to hear about my sale at work but they actually worked! because the client called us and said that they were going to move forward with our proposal!

I am BACK in NYC tonight (Sunday) to deliver contracts to them tomorrow morning at 8am.  Fingers crossed that their attorneys are feeling generous.

With any luck I'll be back to blogging regularly soon!

Anyway, I want to share another Blogher story with you that I think you'll really enjoy...

My roommate this year at Blogher was a woman who runs a sex toy site.  She's awesome and we had a great time and great conversations.  But that's not what this story is about.

She brought a box of vibrators to NYC to give away so for a few days we had 100+ vibrators in our room.  There were vibrators with Halloween themes on them, vibrators with the zodiac symbol for Virgo (and every other sign) on them and  a whole bunch of other designs.

On the second day I ran back to my room after work and bumped into the cleaning lady.  "Sorry." she said, backing out.  "No." I told her, "I'm leaving." 

She came in.  And then I thought of an even better tip for her.

"What's your sign?" I asked her.  She looked at me, confused.  I guessed that she didn't speak much english.  I think she was Cape Verdean.

"Virgo, Leo, Sagitarius?" I asked her.

"Oh," she said, "Aquarius."

I searched through the box until I found the LONE aquarius vibe at the bottom.  I handed it to her.

"Do you know what this is?" I asked.

"No." she said.

"You'll figure it out." I told her.

About 30 seconds later I  heard a high pitched giggle that got louder and higher in pitch as it continued.

Between the hysterical laughter she told me, "I figured it out!"

I laughed with her and grabbed my things.  As I walked out and down the hall I could hear her laughing hysterically.

The next day I passed her in the hall.  When she saw me she started to giggle again and she was still giggling when I got on the elevator.

I hope she had as much fun with that vibrator as I had listening to her laugh about it!

 

Please

At 8am eastern my work partner will walk into my client's CFO and present our best and final offer. At 11am the number two person at my company will walk into my client's CIO and ask him to buy our solution to promote the partnership between our two companies.

From 7am until approximately noon, I will be in the closest bathroom losing my breakfast, tonight's dinner and potentially the sushi from yesterday's lunch.

If we get this deal, I paid for it with my summer.  If we get it, it will have been worth it - this once.  If we don't get it, I will have learned the type of lesson you hope never to learn - namely that life is too short to pay for money with time.

There is nothing further I can do, yet it's 1:11am and I cannot sleep - even though I need to be awake in less than 6 hours.

So I'm here, blogging, to ask you to please, PLEASE close your eyes on Friday morning between 8am and 11am and think joyous thoughts for me.

Thanks.

Lava Crotch

Note: I'm sorry if you've gotten sick of hearing about Blogher.  I haven't done much these past few weeks except work, hug my daughters and go to Blogher and LET ME TELL YOU I got about three months worth of posts from Blogher.

Anyway, companies pay ALL SORTS of money to buy a booth in the Expo Hall at Blogher.  Then they give away products in hopes that bloggers will write about them and spread their message far enough and wide enough to justify the price of the booth.

Back in the day they gave out cool stuff, good stuff, AMAZING stuff.  But the past few years as blogher has grown from 2000 to 3500 to 5000+ attendees the goods have gone downhill.

This year there were a couple of booths giving out last year's products while putting this year's products on display.

That's fine with me, I don't go for the free stuff.  But DO NOT get in the way of the coupon bloggers.  They will cut you for 1/4 of a Jimmy Dean sausage pattie and a $0.30 coupon.

Don't get me wrong, some of the products are great.  I received a giftbag from MDmoms.com that included sunscreen towlettes - essentially wipes filled with sunscreen that you just wipe on your skin.  They SAVED us (and the kids) from sunburns as we vacationed the following few days in NYC.

But you have to read the directions.

Another booth at Blogher this year was POISE.

Now I want you to stop reading for a minute and think about POISE.  Do you have any idea what they make?

If you're like me you have no idea what they make - except you know that it's a feminine product, right?  So you're probably thinking something for dryness, or itchiness, or odor or it could even be something like Depends - but whatever it is, it's for DOWN THERE.

Well the Poise booth was ALSO giving out towlettes.

Now NYC in August is HOT and HUMID.  There were a lot of women complaining about the heat and specifically how hot they were getting IN THEIR PANTS.

Well there was a woman, and there may have been more than one, who decided to use the "Body Cooling Towlettes" that Poise was handing out to do a little freshening up.

What she didn't realize was that the "Cooling Towlettes" - while STILL a feminine product - were NOT for DOWN THERE.  They were for women experiencing HOT FLASHES and they contained some alcoholic/menthol molotov cocktail that you MOST DEFINITELY do not want to put on your girl bits!

Which she found out about 3 seconds too late.

As she told this HORRIFIC story to my friend Jen, Jen looked at her sympathetically and then cried, "You got LAVA CROTCH?"

The woman nodded emphatically.

And then the three of us burst out laughing.

 

Poetry in Motion

There were over 5500 people at Blogher and I'm not going to lie to you, some of us them were socially awkward.

I'm not judging but the truth is that there were some people that you like just fine from behind your computer that you don't want to spend 72 hours of real life with.  It's nothing personal.

At one point my friend Jen and I were on the dance floor when she spotted a woman who had been stalking us for two days making a beeline in our direction.

And I have to confess, we sacrificed one of our friends to save ourselves.

Here's how it went down...

The woman was headed right for us, my friend John (hello John!) was behind us.

Jen grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the woman.  As she passed by John (who had his back to us) she reached out and tapped him on the FAR shoulder.

He turned around (away from us) and was standing face to face with the woman.

Her face lit up and she HUGGED THE HELL out of him, while he was standing there trying to figure out what had just happened.

This post is how he's finding out.  (Sorry about that darlin'.)

Anyway, I know this post makes me sound insanely bitchy and I'm sorry - that's not really how it was - I'm as awkward as anyone and sometimes I just have to dive behind a garbage can to avoid talking to a stranger.

I only mention this to tell you that Jen's tap and run move was so smooth I just looked at her in awe and said, "POETRY."  

I need some mad decoy skills like that.

Particularly with 4 children.

 

Street Meat

We don't have food trucks in Boston.  Apparently this is a travesty because there is a huge movement underway to bring food trucks to the city.

And let me just state for the record, that if they DO unleash a mobile caravan of epicurean establishments - I will NOT be buying.  Because, while I CAN admit to frequently buying croissants from a street cart in NYC, I could not actually buy prepared food from a truck.

First of all, they pre-cook the food and then it just SITS there.  FOR HOURS.  

Secondly, there is no place for them to wash their hands.  What if the cook sneezes, or scratches his ear? 

And don't talk to me about Purell, I get that it kills germs, but they're still THERE - they're just dead.

"Excuse me, would you like dead germs with that?"

UGH.

Anyway, there is an incredible proliferation of food trucks of every sort in New York - from the aforementioned croissants to sausage & onions or hotdogs to trucks offering Halal food (think kosher but for arabs.)

Now back at Blogher, one of these Halal trucks caught my eye.  You see, there are two halal trucks on the corner of 6th Ave and 54th St - one on 6th Ave, and one on 54th St and the interesting thing is that while the truck on 6th Ave has a steady line of 2 or 3 customers, the one on 54th St has a constant line of 30-40 people.

I kid you not.

So one day as I was walking back to the hotel I noticed this phenomenon and I thought the obvious, "The guy on 54th street must put crack cocaine in the halal."

And then I had an epiphany.

If you were keeping to a Halal diet, what would be even BETTER than crack cocaine?

That's right baby!

BACON.

I'll give you odds that that halal truck is sneaking bacon into their chicken, rice and salad kabobs and there are thousands of muslim people eating out of the back of that truck three times a day, shoveling bacon-laced food into their mouths going, "Praise Allah, This is the best damn halal meal I have ever fucking eaten."