May02
Suburban in the City
I made it to Chicago yesterday, despite a bit of a rocky start. I won’t go into too much detail, other than to say my dogs conspired against me and decided to make their Great Escape as I was trying to get my luggage out to the car so I could drop the kids off and catch my flight. Luckily the airport in Mobile is tiny, so the time I lost trying to deal with the dogs was made up with check-in literally taking less than ten minutes from entrance to gate. I had this idea I was going to be arriving here in an airplane, but what I got instead resembled a tin can with wings. I’ve never seen a plane so small! 3 seats across, and naturally I got the two most talkative guys on the plane sitting across the isle, both trying to chat me up. Thanks goodness I remembered my Ipod. Paul O’Flaherty met me at the airport, and actually managed to find me in O’Hare, no small feat. My first impression of Chicago was total awe. I’ve never been in a city this large, and the size of it along with the constant commotion of people and noise and traffic and everything made it a bit overwhelming. I spent the entire ride to the hotel dumbstruck, and I know O’Flaherty was laughing at my Country Mouse/City Mouse moment. The hotel we are at is nice, the rooms are smaller than I’ve ever seen but I’m told in a big city thats pretty normal. Still trying to adjust to the constant noise outside. It was exciting almost to the point of being over-stimulating.
After several weeks of planning, we had the FuelMyBlog blogger meet-up at O’Callaghan’s last night. Amazingly interesting to see what happens when you get a bunch of bloggers together, and throw alcohol into the mix. A few random things I picked up last night-
Joanna from Confident Writing is from Scotland, and I could have listened to her talk all night. Her accent is seriously something you have to hear. Loved it!
Colleen at Communicatrix has got to be one of the most interesting people ever to talk to, and I really hope to get to spend some more time with her this weekend.
Derek Semmler is in his own words quite shy, but you’d never know it in person. And because I did ask, the piercing in both his ears are indeed his only piercings. 
Wendy Piersall was way cooler than I expected, and this may or may not have something to do with the fact that she has not one, but several tattoos. And she said ‘fuck’, which you’d never see on her blogs.
Terry Starbucker doesn’t drink. No, seriously he doesn’t. He is however more than happy to encourage others’ imbibery
Liz Strauss was a bit more of a social butterfly than I expected, as she always seems so quiet! She draws people to her in a way thats really cool to watch.
There were tons of other fun and fabulous people there, but we didn’t leave until 1am, so thats as good as it gets for now. The plan had been to do video footage last night, but due to a lack of available wifi, that got nixed. Everyone was busy socializing, so instead of podcasting, Paul decided to stage an impromptu pool tournament that truly was the highlight of the evening.
Overall it was a really fun evening, and I look forward to seeing them all again tonight 
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