You don't get to go out until you've unpacked.

First you have to get your stuff out of the Poppy bag and put it in the fake Botticelli dresser. Everyone knows that.

Then you get to go out for a walk.



Everything is very scenic.



People around here like window boxes.



Say hello to the history museum. It's so little and cute, you'd never guess there was actually a lot of history around here. But there is. A 1774 Revolutionary War skirmish where colonists stole gunpowder from Fort William and Mary, and the signing of the 1905 Sino-Japanese treaty. So there, doubters and nay-sayers!

If you don't have a purple front door, you are no one in this town. NO ONE.





And of course, you have to remember not to act like a

How aggregating!

You guys, this is just too bizarre to ignore. This morning I did a Google search on "Poppy Buxom Chicago" or some such phrase just to see what the internet thought of me.

I found the usual blather, like this blog. But I also found this blog. Which apparently simply aggregates other people's blog entries. And which was running my recipe for barbecued pork from Horrifying Foodstuffs.

So the good news is my dinner has made the big time. And considering how infrequently I bother to cook, I guess it's good that this singular event has been immortalized on the internet.

But why this particular recipe? Didn't this aggregator realize that the blog is called Horrifying Foodstuffs?

Why didn't this person grab any of my other, more interesting recipes? Like this one? Or this one?

What's the matter--does he have bad taste?

OK, I'll shut up now.

(ice) Cream of Some Young Guy

So we got to New Hampshire last night. And we didn't have any food. So I had two glasses of white wine and a couple of peanut butter crackers for dinner. Isn't it great? I'm losing weight already!

Of course, my great new figure will be offset by my new malodorous-ness. Because we arrived in New Hampshire when the seacoast was in the middle of a heat wave. And we discovered that we're out of heating oil. Which means that we can't heat the house--and that's OK; see above. But we also can't heat the water.

So baths are limited to the kettle-full-of-hot-water-poured-to-a-sink-of-cold and it's very Amish, and Witness, and all that. And I get to pretend that I'm Kelly McGinnis and That Stud Muffin I Married is Harrison Ford peeking at me, and isn't that sexy?

This would all be great--great new figure, peeking, sexiness. Except Harrison Ford is in the kitchen making ice cream.

I hadn't mentioned it, but I bought an ice cream maker earlier this summer, and he's gone nuts. He. Won't. Stop. Making. Ice. Cream.

We started with Philadelphia Vanilla and then to taste-tested its flavor with the Frozen Custard Vanilla, which was delicious, but then we came back from Paris, where we'd been eating Berthillon like no tomorrow, so he had to try to replicate the Real Caramel from sugar cooked brown in an iron skillet that they serve with a few grains of salt at Angelina's, and then there the Strawberry Marzipan, and James Beard's version of Chocolate (which is a rather light milk chocolate flavor, but it's made with both cooked custard and whipped cream for an amazing mouth feel) and now it's Fresh Peach, and TOO MUCH ICE CREAM.

I ask you.

Who's going to come peek at me as I sponge bathe? Nobody but Sponge Bob.

On the road again

I'm in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, wondering why that name doesn't get me horny.

Meanwhile, I'm posting to Mamarazzi.

See you in New Hampshuh.

Vacation

BlogHer is over.

I finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

It's time to get packed for three weeks in New Hampshire.

While we drive, I'll be thinking of eight more things about me, because Schmutzie has tagged me.

We leave tomorrow morning, as early as That Stud Muffin I Married can manage to drag his Not Morning People wife and children out of their beds and into the minivan. He's threatening 5:00 a.m.

I'll be carrying this


on my lap.

Many thanks to the amazing Wendy, Susie Sunshine, and Blackbird for sending it.

Blackbird, please notice the rocks.

BlogHer07: A Square Peg in a Round Hole

Maybe BlogHer07 wasn't as bad as I thought.


What can have changed my mind? OK, call me shallow: it's because Susie Sunshine and Blackbird and I won prizes.

That's what I won. It's toy bins. Made of fine, smooth birch wood, lovingly hand-painted in organic milk paints by disabled garden gnomes. Or something along those lines.

Now, do I need a toy box? No, I do not need a toy box. My children are 10 and 12, and my toy box days are pretty much over.

But it was free. A prize! (A prize that I totally don't deserve to win; I crashed the party.)

But I'm going to accept it. And then, if I feel a bit guilty, I'll send it to Dooce.

BlogHer07: I can't believe I wasted $200 on this. Updated.

OK, that's kind of a misleading headline, because that kind of behavior is exactly what I do best.

You know how social networking sites like MySpace and Friendster are always asking what your interests are? If I took them seriously, I'd type in different answers. I'd answer "blogging, deciding whether I have more of a crush on Jack Aubrey or Stephen Maturin, putting on makeup, and wasting money." Instead of that crap I'm always spouting about reading and listening to classical music.

So I'm actually not opposed to wasting money. Not on principal, anyway. It's something of a hobby of mine. But BlogHer07 was definitely a waste of money.

The best thing about it has been meeting and talking with other bloggers. Not the famous ones, so much, although I was introduced to a few famous ones by Blackbird and Schmoozie Sunshine,* and they were all very nice. And their business cards were so cool that I'd love to go back and get more. Talk about imaginative. These girls are business card geniuses. Some of them weren't even cards. Kristen at Mommy Needs a Cocktail was handing out shotglasses. The Sarcastic Journalist was handing out tampons. (All we needed was someone brilliant enough to give away chocolate. Or Brad Pitt.)

But the panels? Sucked. I sat through three, and came to the reluctant conclusion that the people leading them didn't know what they were talking about.

Or the "writers panel" one panelist wrote books first, and then took to blogging in order to promote her book. One blogger blogs short stories. One blogs every day. I am not impressed. BlogHer executives: this is not the equivalent of having Janet Evanovich, Anna Quindlan, and Norah Ephron up there. On the branding yourself panel (whose title had already set off a loud "WTF" response in my head) Penelope Trunk declared that there was no such thing as going from blogging to book-writing. (Jen Lancaster, anyone? Who's on book number three? Hello?)

No wonder we were all live-blogging or twittering or checking our email or web-surfing or checking out each others' blogs. Give us a place to plug in our laptops and free wireless and guess what happens? We tune out the stupid stuff and do what we want.

But I didn't need BlogHer to do that.

So the $200 I paid appears to have covered the meeting space, the hotel shuttle, breakfast and lunch the first day, the printed program, one cocktail at the first evening's cocktail party, free wireless, those dreary panels ... not much else.

Seems a bit steep.

* * * * *

Update: If you want to save $200 and maybe a bunch of travel costs, read Schmutzie's 769th post. You'll have to scroll down, but it's worth it.

To Schmutzie's advice, I will add that you should have clickable links to each post.

*hee hee hee.