hey now, you’re a rock star

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If you’ve found your way here from fridayplaydate.blogspot.com and you’re wondering WHERE THE HELL AM I? fear not: Blogger has decided that the original Friday Playdate is a spam blog and has locked me out. I’m in the process of setting up fridayplaydate.com (I know! So exciting!) but it will take a few days, and there is always the VERY REAL possibility that I will totally screw it up. Hang in there and cross your fingers that I don’t lose everything in the process.

Now for our regularly scheduled dishing . . .

With Chris and SJ at Navy Pier. Swiped from Kristin’s Flickr.

What’s one more torpedo to a sinking ship?

The great thing about staying in really swanky hotels is that you always have the option to charge things to your room, like a $4.00 cup of coffee or drinks for people you just met five minutes ago, or both, depending on the time of day and who you’re sitting with. Chris and I realized early on that there was no point in constantly whipping out cash or a credit card, because we could just sign for it and get on with our drinking networking. Of course, this meant signing MY name to everything because I had made the hotel reservations, and I think Chris took a little TOO much delight in this; she would sidle up to me with fresh drinks and say, “I just TOTALLY signed YOUR NAME to the check!”

She looks sweet, but she is hardcore. Seriously.

We spent the whole weekend joking that we had NO IDEA what the bill was going to be, and that we would probably wind up paying more for our drinks than we would for our swanky room and ha ha ha how funny would THAT be? But mostly we just didn’t care because seriously, how much could we POSSIBLY spend on DRINKS? On Sunday morning the nice people at the W slid our bill under the door while we were sleeping. I woke up and wandered to the bathroom and then, still half asleep, opened the bill and looked at what I thought was the total.

And nearly had a stroke.

So I’m thinking HOLY COW how did that HAPPEN and reminding myself that there’s nothing we can do about it NOW because we already DRANK all that wine and coffee and vodka and thinking that NEXT YEAR I will bring my OWN booze when I realize that what I’m looking at is our ROOM NUMBER (we were on the twenty-somethingth floor) and NOT the total bill. Which made the ACTUAL bar bill (which was NOT $1,600 or even anything close, thank GOD) look pretty good.

Today I’m wondering exactly how much alcohol you would have to buy to have a $1,600 bar tab. Hmm.

The Nancy Drew Dress

On Thursday morning, Chris’ friend Jeannie picked us up in her Mini Cooper and took us to Wicker Park to shop the vintage stores. Around here, “vintage” means Gap from two years ago, but the shops Jeannie took us to had actual VINTAGE clothes, like dresses from the 60s and 70s. I found one dress that was ALMOST perfect; it was a sheath dress in a turquoise blue and white toile, with a belt. It made me look like Nancy Drew, which made me incredibly happy, except . . .

The dress was made of upholstery fabric (you know, like you put on FURNITURE) so it was stiff and itchy, and the neckline was oddly small (the dress wasn’t mass produced, it was MADE by someone, which was awesome as well, except for the made-of-upholstery-fabric part). I almost bought it, just for fun, but then I realized that the combination of the stiff heavy fabric and the too-small neck would mean that I would never wear it.

But now I am DETERMINED to find a great vintage dress. Preferably one that makes me look like Nancy Drew.

Did you see that?

Before the vintage shopping, Jeannie and Chris and I had breakfast. Jeannie was telling us a funny story about house renovations or her daughter or something (Jeannie makes EVERYTHING funny, honestly) and I was looking away from the window and at Jeannie. Suddenly Chris says, “Did you SEE that?” and she and Jeannie start to giggle.

Because a man had just run by the restaurant in his tighty whiteys. Apparently he was out for a jog in his undies because that’s what they do in Big Cities.

There was a conference too, you know.

I hate to recap BlogHer with a bunch of stories about drinking and shopping and men’s underpants, but I suspect that those things are far more interesting to all of you than How I Networked. I will tell you this, though: over the weekend, I wore an antique cocktail ring of my grandmother’s, on my index finger. It’s a lovely piece but it’s too big to wear every day, so this weekend seemed like the perfect time to get it out. Today I’m back to my sensible shoes and kid-friendly clothes, and I’ve put the ring away, but I can still feel the band around my finger, that ghost sensation when you’ve gotten used to something and then you stop doing it.

I feel like that about this weekend. It’s hard for me to imagine that I won’t see Chris or SJ or HeatherB today, or anytime soon for that matter. I’m happy to be home, particularly since this weekend away really DID lift the Cloud of Crabby that had been following me all summer, but I kind of can’t believe it’s over. Not just the crazy fun parts (like the ENTIRE DAY of drinking nothing but coffee and wine with Chris) but the serious, networky, sell-myself-to-people-who-matter parts.

Fortunately, Charlie is running around in his tighty whiteys, so at least I have that to remind me of Chicago.

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Filed under BlogHer '07, cocktail hour starts now, girly stuff