NaBloPoMo or NaNoWriMo?

Always up for a challenge… that’s me…

So this month, there are two Get Up and Go challenges happening. The National Blog Post Month and National Novel Writing Month. The first is about posts – one a day for the whole month of November. The second is geared more towards the completion of a novel. I’m not really sure what kind of book you could write in a month… and I’m sure there are nuances to this particular challenge. There *have* to be… Anyone? Well, anyway, I think I might just write a few thousand words a day as a writing exercise, which I had originally intended to do with this blog.

And that leads me to my question and poll:

When I was at BlogHer08 in San Francisco last summer, I met and heard from many women that had started their blogs as a way to get to the book inside of them, either as a writing exercise or a platform builder. I am happy to admit that I fall into that category. But there were also tons of blog writers that do product reviews, travel blogs, and social forums, as well. Each of us had a primary reason for jumping in to the blogoshpere. Like many projects, some have morphed into something that is a glimmer of that first spark. Others have stayed the course, but may be the third, fourth, or fifth project of a blogger.

So what about you? What got you going?

I’m going to attempt a post a day. Maybe in there, I’ll talk about the story in my head and how my month of writing is coming along. Anyone else feeling up to the challenge? Share your links in the comment section so we can all follow along.

FYI: I’m also going to see if I can get NaMoSleMo off the ground. That’s National Month to Sleep More. I made that one up… ;-)

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Technorati Tags: NaBloPoMo,NaWriMo,writing,blogging,polldaddy

Mean Girls

I'm getting tired of the Mean Girls.

Ask any woman and she can tell you a story about Mean Girls. They were the girls who could make you feel small because you wore the wrong shoes or caught the attention of one of "their" boys. They were the ones that always had angry eyebrows and wicked smiles. They came in little nasty clusters of Mean.

A friend told me of a time that a group of Mean Girls threatened to flush her head down the toilet at school so she hid in fear. Another bubbly friend had a story of having Mean Girls in her college dorm set fire to her door posters. Her room mate told her she had been targeted because the other girls thought she was phony and they were all sick of it. Then there's the girl who had to hide in the library for fear of being beaten up because she had made the mistake of becoming a certain boy's girlfriend.

Some Mean Girls have morphed into Mean Moms... Momzillas.

My Twitter buddy, Morningside Mom was sharing about her experiences with Momzillas. The ones that have to make other moms feel less than good about themselves. The ones that critique you indirectly by one-upping every time you bring anything up. Snacks. Bed times. Schools. Vacations. Good Lord, you just don't want to talk to those ladies! Morningside Mom said she just finds reasons to break up with them like time constraints. But what if that mom is on the other end of the couple? For instance, your husband's friend's wife? Uuughhh... I had to deal with that last weekend. You know what? It sucks! I felt like I was on the defensive from the moment we walked in the door. I answered her questions about homeschool and my long trip and having a twenty-year-old at my age very carefully and politely. She softened up a bit when I over-complimented her kids and old mis-matched furniture... (there, now I feel a little better).

Why did she have to rattle my cage so hard???

Did I tell you about the fur flying after BlogHer? Yeah, I know I was on a cloud when I wrote about it on my return. I sort of hinted to one situation. I peeked in on another. But who knew? Okay, so Dooce... I'm a fan. I've found that y'all fall into two camps: Love Her or Hate Her. So, a couple of weeks after we got back, another gal that I was a fan of wrote about her Dooce experience. Apparently, upon being introduced, she was pretty much blown off by Heather. I remembered my Dooce experience and was like, are we talking about the same Heather? Well the blown off fan made it a really big deal eliciting sympathy-for-her-slams-for-Heather comments. I stayed out of it. I didn't really want to pick sides and decided to remain fans of both. But then, for the last couple of months, I've been reading some more of the blown off blogger's stuff. I started seeing a lot of posts that are really just, well... snarky and mean. Her targets have been unschoolers and stay-at-home-dads as well as a poor "friend" that just isn't that into her anymore. She harshly criticizes moms in her neighborhood and in the public eye while she posts pictures of her kids dressed in undies on her blog. Um... Kettle!

So I had to take her off the list.

If you're going to click out of here, I'd prefer it be to give money to Nie Nie or to read about a rockin' mama or to be delighted by a bubbly mom in a pink feather boa.

Why do you think Mean Girls or Momzillas are the way they are? What do you think? Are they jealous? Insecure? Or just born mean? Did their daddies not love them enough or did they learn this behavior from their Momzillas? How did you (or do you) deal with Mean Girls as kids, teens, or co-workers & moms today.



And even though Heather is an Obama fan, Dooce stays on the Blog Roll.

Calling Nashville!

Okay, so I was thinking it would be cool to go to one of the Reach Out BlogHer days since the list of cities is so cool. My number one pick is Nashville. Woo Hooo! Lindsay from Suburban Turmoil is always going on about how much fun the place is. I also have another friend who visits family there often... and she doesn't even like her family. Plus, you've got the Grand Ol' Opry. Just a short drive to Graceland in Memphis. I mean, everything I've ever heard about it is that it's a fun time. So here's the deal... if you live near or in Nashville and wanted to attend the BlogHer Reach Out tour but all your non-geek friends won't go with you, never fear! Sugar will go! I would get a discount, which would help offset my shopping, the shopping that you, Nashville Native, will have to endure with me. Haha!

Any takers?? I promise not to behave... I'll even bring you a (used) toy Shamu whale from San Diego... pleeeeez!!!

Out of Focus

While I was at BlogHer in The City (aka San Francisco), I joined the Photo Walk organized by The Shutter Sisters. I was still a little overwhelmed from the morning's session on Beautiful Blogging and I was starting to get a little tired from trekking back and forth to my sisters apartment looking for my phone. Although I made it in time to grab a lunch, the obsessively efficient banquet staff at the St. Francis had already pulled the sodas. I started to feel pretty woozy and was actually planning to pass out before Rod, the very attentive Banquet Captain ran to get me a couple of Sprites. I guzzled one down, which is usually all I need to stop the ground from moving. He sat with me and made sure that I was okay. I had to get to the lobby for the Photo Walk but was still a little light-headed so he walked me to the elevator. I still had a bag filled with swag and lenses, so I quickly dropped it off with the bellman, took my ticket, and then ran out the front of the hotel searching for my group. Luckily, it's not hard to spot a large group of women with big mama honker cameras around their necks. I ran across the street to start snapping along with them.

And that's when I realized my mistake.

I had completely forgotten to switch to my 28-135 and still had the 70-300. I had to rethink what it was that I wanted to capture (pun intended) in that walk. While I would normally have taken shots of the obvious elements right in front of me, I had to actually do some work to find interesting shots far away. I took pictures of bits and pieces of architecture. I got a shot of a gentleman taking one step at a time without burdening him with my presence. I found crazy little creatures in all kinds of nooks and crannies. I was a little bummed, though, that I would not get to take pictures of the pretty little flowers in a garden that we had come across.

But then I was saved!

At the top of the hill and to the left, we came upon Grace Cathedral. I found some lovely flowers in the planters surrounding the steps up to the church. I did my best to take shots of them with the camera in my hands. Unfortunately, the further back I stepped in order to get the flowers into focus, the further down I got on the steps. I was starting to get frustrated but then thought better of having a tantrum in front of my Shutter Sister heroes. I decided to put the camera on the planter and pull it back to where I thought my intended foliage might come into focus. The results were surprisingly pleasant.

I hope you'll agree... or not... whatever... I don't care... I like 'em!















See... way too close up...


More Pictures over at my Flickr photostream.

Coming Out of the Fog: BlogHer 2008, San Francisco

There is so much to tell I can hardly get my brain around it all. But here goes anyway...

I have tons of notes about syndication and search engine optimization, as well as great video blogging recommendations made by Amber of Capessa and Cathy from seesmic. Plus I got some invaluable tips on tags from a girl named Esther whose My Space page tracking her weight loss was so popular that she was hired by Weight Watchers as some sort of internet guru!

The parties were fantastic! The newbie party on Thursday night was great getting to meet other first time attendees. I guess we accounted for something like 56% of the group. I got to meet Mocha Momma and yes, I did make an ass out of myself by pointing and running over all the while repeating oh-my-God-that's-Mocha-Momma! The whole time I was hopping over to her, her eyes were getting wider and wider going "oh crap, who is this and how can I hide?" (Way to be cool, Shoog... way to be cool...) I told her I was Sugar and she remembered my posts on her site. She seemed relieved that I wasn't some crazy stalker freak... or maybe she still thought I was, but either way, she graciously invited me over to her table where I met the funniest prego at all of BlogHer, Mel the Stay at Aum Mom. I also met Bossy and Average Jane that night. It was pretty surreal, I must say. You might have heard that the People's Party was fun, but really really loud. It WAS! There was a funny little bucket for your extra drink tickets. I say funny because it just sat there all night, kind of empty. Not many people giving up the drink tickets... haha!

But my favorite was definitely Friday night at Ruby Skye, hosted by TNT, more specifically for The Closer and Saving Grace. FYI: TNT gives great swag. I was greeted at that party with a rousing SHOOOGGAAAHHH by Kristy Sammis, the kick-assiest Event Manager in all creation. If you ever meet her, ask her about her pants. The atmosphere inside was hoppin' swanky, but not so much that you wouldn't over hear the best line of the night: "Oklahoma's the new black, Bitch!" (Would the funniest blogger in OK please get in touch with me?!)

It was a good night to laugh after the heaviness of that afternoon.

The first ever Community Keynote on Friday before the party was a group of twenty bloggers whose posts were voted on to be read on stage by their authors. Two of the ladies really hit close to home for me. One would do anything to avoid being anything like her mother, even at the risk of her own sanity. The other who had such severe depression during her pregnancy that... well, you can read her story yourself . Another lovely woman wrote a letter to her face that was so poignant. Very touching. All of these stories made me cry, but also made my heart soar to see and hear the beauty of the human spirit.(searching links... check back soon...)

Saturday was a continuation of great information and education, kicked off by a great roundtable hosted by MSN about SEO. Each of us left with a new handy dandy web cam! Thanks Ani the Excel Diva and Sarah (a kick butt coder for Findable Blogs) for all that great info! But I think the highlight that morning was definitely the Kumbaya room, otherwise known as the Beutiful Blogging session hosted by Kyran Pittman. Let me just say that I did NOT want to leave that room! I was amazed at the awesome things women were doing to propogate goodness in the world through this medium. Many of their ideas that started in the blogoshpere have manifested into the physical world affecting positive change in such great ways. I seriously felt like I had gone to church. I could NOT stop crying... Check these people out, please: Square Girl with Hope Revolution, Lucrecer with Art Slam, Alysa with Just Cause It, and Jen at One Plus Two. Plus another woman who was in the room in spirit, Jen Lemen. I was lucky enough to meet her later that afternoon while she was doing some video for PBS. By the way... Thanks PBS for my kids stack o'swag. They love their stuff!

I took some time to decompress and missed a session to walk around and go inside my head for a while. I got back to the hotel in time for my massage at the spa suite. Then it was off to the Shutter Sisters Photo Walk. In all the hussle and bussle, I forgot to change lenses. So where I would normally be using my macro lens, I was forced to look further away for interesting images with my 200mm. I think this is why I didn't even realize that the lady I was taking shoe pictures with was aka Little Purple Cow, one of my original photo blogging heroes. So, seriously, Stephanie... do those shoes make me look fat? haha... Only one thing I would add to that experience would be an "after party." As if we needed any more parties, right? But it would have been nice to talk longer with Tracy Clark, Karen from Chookooloonks and a cool chick named Nelly from New York. Did anyone else want to call her Nelly Furtado??

I was technically on my own this trip, but not alone. Anytime I wanted, I could look up and find another thirty something lady with a nose piercing and big spectactles carrying a camera and just strike up a conversation. I could look across just about any room I was in and find a familiar face from one of our awesome sessions. No, I was definitely NOT alone. Saturday night's party at Macy's was a blast, but under all the fun (along withe scaring Julio and talking Armen's ear off) I was already feeling a bit wistful knowing that I would be leaving the next day. I didn't want to leave that vibe. I wanted to hold on to the euphoria of finding common ground, I suppose. Not like I totally bonded with 999 other women, but you get what I mean don't you? Anyway, it was sad waking up Sunday morning knowing that I didn't have any reason to go back to the hotel. It was all over. I laid on my sister's couch and teared up wondering where I was going to ever really feel that sense of belonging again? And then I thought...

Duh, Sugar... in the blogs!

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There is so much more, like meeting Rocco DiSpirito... sort of... I'm sure the memories will come back in fits and bursts as all the alcohol and pasta leave my system and as I unpack all the swag and free t-shirts. I will say definitely go if you can next year. It's well worth every last penny. And if the Reach tour goes anywhere near you, and I mean even a neighboring state, I'd highly recommend sucking up the gas prices and heading on over to it. I doubt you will in any way be let down.

Thanks again BlogHer for such an eventful event and such memorable memories!

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Oh, and if you are wondering, I did NOT make an ass out of myself by getting carted away from Dooce's suite. A) she wasn't staying at the hotel, and B) I got a picture with her instead: