jewels in the blogosphere

lovely se'lah of the necessary room has once again sponsored a gift of jewels. random acts of giving and kindness, flowing from the blogosphere into the real world. you sign up, she matches you with another blogger somewhere in the world and you send that person a little gift and a nice card. meanwhile, someone else, somewhere, is sending you a little gift and a card. just because. and everyone's day is that much brighter.

my gift of jewels from planetmfiles arrived on saturday. it's the sweetest little crocheted bookmark and it came with the nicest, bright, cheery card. thank you gayle!!

yes, that's yann martel's life of pi, which i've owned for ages and tried to read several times, but never really got started. then, thanks to sara's photo and kristine's (i would link, but apparently her blog is now invitation only and i'm not invited. sniff.) encouragement in the BC365 flickr group, i picked it up again and this time around, i'm really liking it.

and what i sent? here's a peek, tho' i won't say to whom i sent it, in case it hasn't arrived yet:

loving today...

look at these beautiful girls in my blue room! and am i loving spud's ultra wide angle tokina lens? yes i am. is it now nestled down in a box of fabric over here on "my" side of the desk? perhaps, but if you don't tell, maybe she'll never notice...

blog crush: where is kristine now?

authentic blog camp bubbly for you, kristine.

it seemed like about time for another blog crush. i've been threatening to thinking about blog crushing kristine of where is kristine now? for some time, but her most recent post on the art of travel put me over the edge. she's worldly and adventurous. she's smart. she's funny. she drinks. she eats good food. she makes lists. she reads. she hangs out on beaches. she takes a wicked picture. and did i mention smart and funny? most of the crushes i've ever had in my life (not just blog crushes) were smart and funny, now that i think about it. run along and check her out, i know you'll love her too. and possibly, you'll want to move to vanuatu. like i do. (tho' admittedly she hasn't to my knowledge actually mentioned vanuatu). 

still basking in the sparkle of british blog camp

bee called it that fizzy feeling and spudballoo wrote about it too, but i think for me, it's more of a sparkly feeling that i feel when i think about blog camp. so the sunlight dancing on the oslo fjord when i took a little walk this evening after work seemed to embody the happiness i was feeling as i reflected on the weekend.

BBC was different than the first blog camp back in june. which isn't really that surprising, of course you can't duplicate your experience and you only ever have one first time. it was different for the obvious reason that it wasn't at my house, so i didn't have all of the worries about levels of tidiness and preparedness that i had the first time around. it was quite delightful to just get on a plane and be picked up at the airport and proceed to enjoy myself. and although i had butterflies as i came out to a waiting bee, it was just for a second and then it passed.

i guess i was just really much, much more relaxed. it helped that i knew B and polly and kristina already and that we just picked up where we left off the last time. it also helped that i got there a day ahead of the others and bonded with bee. the impatience of waiting for spudballoo made us quite antsy for the last half an hour or so, me constantly glancing over polly's shoulder and her jumping up to look out the window whenever bee's husband's game shook the house a bit from above (he's got some good speakers on his computer in his lair). but at last we saw this sight...

not a great picture, i realize, but i didn't take time to change to motion settings and just dashed out to capture the moment.

once spud arrived, it felt like things could really begin. bee had stretched out her lunch preparations (she is a brilliant cook and makes a really mean salad) and the timing was perfect. there was a big rush of words over lunch, as we all felt the intensity of being together and wanting to tell everything and ask everything immediately. looking back, i'm not sure any of us ever really properly took a breath, we were in such a rush to talk to one another.

maybe it's something the blogosphere does to us. we sit in our little lairs wherever they may be (mine's currently in a boring hotel room in oslo), tapping out our words and thoughts in isolation, but actually being quite social people. as bee put it, we're sociable loners, so although we are quite happy with our own company (as long as we've got a macbook and wireless (or maybe that's just me)), once we get together, we feel desperate to catch up on the social side of things. so out tumble the words in a huge flood.

this blog camp, as many of you - desperate for updates - noticed, didn't involve much blogging (or camping for that matter, not that we've ever meant camp in that sense). we tweeted some (those of us with iPhones - which was four out of six), but we didn't blog. and we had the password to the wireless and everything, but we were simply too busy talking. and talking. and talking some more. maybe it was also because we had one less day together than at the first blog camp and so we didn't want to "waste" any of our precious time together staring at our screens.

another of the joys of blog camp is, i have to admit, the prezzies. since i was sick the week before, i didn't get to make a present for everyone this time, but i did bring along some goodies - really special chocolate that i bought at the chocolate research facility (yup, that's the name of a posh chocolate shop) in singapore. the packaging was so beautiful (that's what's in the background of the picture in this post) i didn't need to wrap them, so i tied a little wooden viking ship that i acquired at the viking market the previous weekend around them and gave everyone one of the little scrabble tile necklaces that sabin went into overdrive producing a few weeks ago. i happened to have some little tags that said charming, intelligent, adventurous, humorous and inspiring on them and i stamped the name of the person who best suited those words on the back of each one. can you guess who got which one?

overall, with the second blog camp, i feel an evolution of the concept happening and i'm fascinated to see where it's headed. the first time, there was an element of performance to it and that was totally absent this time. we were all just being. enjoying being together. although we ate great food, drank awesome coffees and had glasses of lovely red wine, all of that was secondary to our just being together. really, truly present in the moments we had. sparkling. illuminated.

please do use the links above and go read what everyone else is saying about their experience. i'm sure that together we are capturing some of the sparkle and fizz that was.

that's a lotta palaver

i have spent my entire day getting to oslo. you'd think that would be quite difficult, in light of it being under an hour's flight away. sadly, it wasn't. everything that could go wrong did. metro issues, rebooking of original flight due to missing first one (see aforementioned metro issues), my bag (containing absolutely everything, since i didn't feel like carrying anything but my purse) took the flight after mine and i had to wait for it at the airport (during which time i almost collapsed from lack of food and latte), delays due to tracks under repair near the station i was going to once i got to norway....i could go on, but it's still too depressing and there's no sense all of us being depressed. at least it gave me plenty of time to do lots of processing (aka scribbling of thoughts in my little notebook) of the wonderful blog camp weekend. so i hereby totally change the subject to that.

on twitter, TFM dubbed BC 1.5 British Blog Camp or BBC, and we loved it, so it will hereafter be referred to as BBC, at least by me.  i was reading gail collins' column in the IHT this morning and she said something that resonated with me as i bask in the afterglow of BBC, "whenever anybody asks you to do something off the wall, you should try to do it - unless it involves being unethical or a two-plane connection." from all that i learned at BBC, i would have to wholeheartedly endorse this as a kind of general life philosophy (especially the two-plane connection part).

because if you think about it, going to a stranger's house in another country for the weekend is a bit off the wall. although we don't feel like strangers here in the blogosphere thanks to the very personal nature of blogs, there is still  chance that someone might present themselves as other than they are. however, i felt certain that i knew bee and that we had a lot in common and that she would be as i thought she was. and indeed it was true, only of course, even better.

from the moment i arrived and we greeted one another like old friends with a big hug, we didn't stop talking. i told her that the only thing on my agenda was to spend a bit of time in a bookstore. so we did that, after we had a lovely lunch and a long walk along the river in a town not far from her house. the whole time, we talked and talked. we told our stories. it was a bit like opening a floodgate for both of us. the words tumbled out. we hardly paid attention to our food, which was excellent or even our coffee, which was lovely.

when i think about it now, it was quite astonishing how much we both had to say. and how urgently we seemed to need to tell one another our stories. in person. i'm not sure why it was. in one sense, it was like a rush to catch up. even in the bookstore, i hardly wandered around, we spent a bit of time by the cookbooks (oops, bought four), but even then, we didn't stop talking and laughing and talking some more. it was quite extraordinary. a real palaver.

we'd had a late lunch and when we got back to bee's beautiful home, i settled my things into the cheerful orange room (which oddly enough, i failed to photograph, tho' that's for the best since it belongs to her very private daughter, tho' i will say it had a gorgeous orla keily duvet cover that practically leapt into my suitcase) and we had a cup of tea. as we chatted away about being mothers, the mysterious behavior of teenagers, the delightful behavior of tweens, schools, books, laura ingalls wilder, cookbooks (i bow to bee's collection, she beats mine by a long shot, tho' those four i bought helped a little bit). of course, we also talked about blogs and the ones which inspire us. funnily, enough, the blogs the two of us tend to read don't overlap that much, so i can tell you, i have a whole new list of wonderful places to discover.

while we chatted, in the back of my mind, i was thinking about the ways in which bee had both retained a lot of her americanness and also had absorbed a lot of englishness--the tea, the public (which are private) school talk, the driving on the "wrong" side, vocabulary. i found myself wondering in the back of my mind how much americanness i retain (i suspect it probably came out a bit in bee's presence) and how scandinavian i have become. because i think it's hard to tell about ourselves. we're so inside of ourselves, aren't we? how do we know? i was a little disturbed by the thought of exactly how far i now am from americanness (and how far i feel inside of me from danishness), because it leaves me with that strong, melancholic sense of what i always call that mid-atlantic feeling - adrift in the middle of the atlantic, not belonging (by choice) either place.

but that makes it sound like BBC made me sad, which is far from the truth. being together in person with these amazing women gave me so much energy (that was lucky in light of today) and so much inspiration and much to write about in the coming days. so stay tuned for more.

reflections on the blogosphere and real life

it's back to school time. back to work (tho' technically i was working in singapore last week). back to daily routines. and back to the airport - tho' today it's husband who is going (to north carolina, via chicago, oddly enough). me, i don't fly 'til friday, when i head for blog camp 1.5 in london.

looking back on the past month, i realize how busy it's been. i didn't really have time off, since i haven't officially earned any yet, so our small holidays were sneaked in here and there along with work. but we did manage to add three new starbucks mugs to our collection, so three new places were visited - KL, amsterdam and dublin. i didn't get a new singapore mug, tho' they had some that match this new series, because i already got singapore years ago. it's rather fun to have the style of the mug reflect the period in which you first visited the place. and i won't at all devote any reflection to the implications of the cultural imperialism of starbucks in places as different from one another as KL and dublin. me, i'm just grateful for a grande latte, loungey, comfortable seating below the herstal lamps and free wifi, wherever it's found.

* * *

over the past couple of weeks, where i have been largely away from the blogosphere (at least from the reading blogs side of it), i realized a few things. the blogosphere isn't as different from real life as i thought it was. there is lots of drama, catfighting, petty annoyances, pettier obsessions and women being hard on women (why do we do that to ourselves?). happily, that negativity is easier to avoid than in real life, since you can just stay away from the places where it's going on and there's no danger of actually running into someone you'd rather not run into. and there's so much goodness going on in the blogosphere--things to inspire, make you laugh, things to learn, things that make you think there is hope for the world--that it more than makes up for the negatives. maybe it's just normal that in cyberspace, as in real life, we make friends, keep some of them, grow apart from others, move on and make new friends. i'm not sure why i thought it was any different online than offline, but somehow i did.

* * *

and speaking of new friends, in singapore, i got together rather spontaneously for a quick drink with a blogger who i haven't known for that long...kim of measure of all things. kim is a south african who lives and works in singapore. she very good-naturedly allowed herself to be subjected to our questions about how on earth she can take living in the plastic world that is singapore. and she did confirm my suspicions that singapore is a great place to be an ex-pat. it's safe, clean, it functions very well and there are cheap flights to more exotic, real destinations in the region. i still have half a mind to spend some time there working at some point. it is difficult for me to imagine being from cape town tho' and wanting to be anywhere but there, but on the other hand, i do love a good adventure, so it was great fun to meet kim. and for that opportunity, i am very grateful to the blogosphere. and if you really want to both crochet and be really inspired in a really brainy, deep way, you must read kim's latest blog post. and take the time to watch the video. it's blow-you-away amazing.

* * *

this time of year, as summer transitions to fall, i always feel reflective. and i think that transition is an apt word. also here in the blogosphere. when i look back a year, things have changed a great deal. that's partially due to BoN, but i think it's more natural and organic than that. i think that here in cyberspace as in life, we make transitions. new interests that we write about bring new readers and we make new friends. some of the old friends drift away because at the same time, they have moved to different interests and have new readers and new friends on their own blogs. some blog friends endure and sadly, some do not. some go to a place that you simply can't follow. but the beauty and wonder of it to me is that there are always new blogs to discover, new connections to make. and i've noticed that i have a lot of new people leaving comments and i'm really happy for the discoveries of new blogs and new perspectives that gives me. this is not to say that i don't love comments from the old crowd too--i'm just trying to say that i love the expanding sense of community. so thank you ALL for your comments, they're wonderful.

i have found some really good friends here in this bloggy world. and i've drifted away from others. but there are a few, that although we've drifted apart, i know our relationship would prove to be cat love and at some point, something will again strike a chord and we'll be back to our wonderful, deep level of friendship that we had developed. because in some sense we do get to know one another quite well here, don't we? the medium of the blog is very personal and diaristic at times (sometimes nauseatingly so, admittedly). we simply reveal so much of ourselves through our words and pictures, even if those pictures don't necessarily show us. the things we choose to share (or not share) speak volumes and in many ways, we are laid bare for all to see.

maybe that's why failed friendships in the blogosphere hurt as much as they do. we've revealed ourselves, left ourselves vulnerable and open. and when we're rejected or worse, ignored, it hurts that much more. or maybe i'm being too deep and philosophical - forgive me, it's a rainy monday - maybe real life simply intervenes and it's so much more compelling than online life that people just drift away. or maybe it's just that sometimes you feel all vibrant and sometimes you feel like earth tones, so as i said, more natural and organic than anything else.

* * *

at the end of the week, i'll go to blog camp 1.5 at Bee's house in england. Bee is one of several soul sisters i've found in this bloggy world. she and i are the same age, we both married a european man and uprooted ourselves from the land of our birth. we both abandoned Ph.D. studies before the dissertation stage. she has daughters and so do i. strangely enough, we even have an LNG thing in common. i feel i already know her so well and i know that from the minute i see her this weekend, we'll be completely at ease together and we won't even come close to running out of things to talk about. i have that wonderful feeling of anticipation of meeting her. the one where you want to capture that first time moment because you only have a first time once and you want to treasure it so you can mull it over later.

so i'm really looking forward to the bloggy world and the real world converging once again this coming weekend when B, polly, seaside girl, kristina, spudballoo and me get together at bee's house. and i'm certain that i will not be disappointed.

rocking out

last week, i got a wonderful little surprise in the mail. an open heart from the lovely blog, recovery from a life not lived, sent me two stones from her parents' ranch and two packets of seeds so that i can grow some of those yummy lemon cucumbers. i've already planted them in the greenhouse and hope we might get to taste them already this year, even tho' it's a bit late in the season. i'm hoping that the greenhouse helps. thank you so much, open heart!!

and photographing these little stones made me realize that i hadn't shared the lovely little flat stones that seaside girl brought to me when she came to blog camp:

i really love them--they're so flat and smooth. and now the little stone treasure bowl on my desk looks like this:

so, as i type and work away at my desk, i'm accompanied by little reminders of my connections from all over the world. i think that's pretty cool.

* * *

i'm off to dublin for a few days, but have scheduled plenty of secrets to keep you satisfied.

* * *

and be sure to check out the new project, across ø/öresund launching this week. it's a new photo collaboration with the lovely kristina. we're nikon girls, you know. skåne was lost to denmark in 1658, but we're working on reuniting them, at least in pictures.

links and connections

i love the blogosphere. i've said it before. i'll no doubt say it again. but today, the thing i'm loving about it is that whole connection thing. and how connections happen and you can actually see them--in the comments, in links, on people's blogrolls, in the form of blog crushes, in sidebars...connections are visible all around us.

back in late april, when my blog became Blog of Note, a hilarious blogger who calls herself extranjera found me. i was so taken with her blog, that i used the small window of opportunity blogger had open at that time to nominate blogs for blog of note to nominate hers. for a couple of months, nothing happened, but then a week ago, what will i ever do with my life? was named blog of note. a very deserved honor. and i have found myself just as delighted watching her followers numbers rise (and even surpass my own!) as i was watching my own rise in those heady early days of BoN. yay extranjera and yay blogger!! it's stuff like this that makes me feel like the fairyblogmother™. 

while we were waiting for it to happen, a whole lot of other connections happened. and other blogs were created - collaborations in cyberspace - trans-atlantic learning adventures, hermit book club, siamese sisters, the idea of blog camp was born (thank you husband!) and the first one happened and several others have been planned, members were added to the balderdash collaboration and this week the ARWP project was launched (for all of us who battle against Real World People and would like to join a sorority support group cult). because this is what it's really all about, this blogging thing (it took me awhile to get that - for along time i thought it was about my sanity)--it's about connections.

the very best connections for me are resulting in real-life, in-person friendships--of the kind that blog camp represents. meeting B, extranjera, kristina, polly and seaside girl in person was such a great experience that i find it difficult to adequately describe it. that we're all (minus extranjera, who will be galavanting off to the US) going to get together next month near london at Bee's house and also meet spudballoo at BC 1.5 is something i'm so excited about. and it's all made possible through the wonder of the interweb. and although all of these people seem to be just ephemeral links here on my blog, those links enable them to be connected to all of you who are reading this. they're just a click away. and when i think of the multiplicity of connections that represents, it boggles my mind.

and i started thinking about all of this because dutchbaby told me this morning that she and tangobaby, who both live in SF, are getting together with other blog friends, who i also know and love--relyn and robin--and having a blog camp of sorts in SF. blog camp 1.1, we're calling it, in case there ends up being others before 1.5 near london, then we save a few numbers for those. how marvelous is that? i really wish i was there to join in the fun (and the photo walks)! i hope you fabulous women have a great time!

these connections just make me so happy. thank odin for hyperlinks! you never know what new adventures they'll take you on.

and speaking of connections, be watching this space for an announcement of a new project--one joining denmark and sweden as they haven't been joined in several hundred years...coming soon, right here on blogger.

when we create things and release them into the world

it was not even two months ago that the idea of blog camp was born. and already, we've held the first one, planned the second and organized an emergency we-simply-must-get-together-again blog camp 1.5 in the UK in between the first two and we have 50 followers (!!) on the blog camp blog. on top of it, sara is planning a spin-off blog camp (note: this link is just to sara's blog, not a specific post on blog camp 2.1) in the US, to be held over labor day weekend, at the same time as blog camp 2.0 in denmark. there really is a snowball effect happening.

i think it's pretty amazing to see these small bits and pieces of the thoughts and ideas which we throw out into the blogosphere being caught and made into beautiful things all around us. and the fact that there are real people behind it all, making things happen, makes me realize that we are quite far from husband's theory that the internet will take on a life of its own (he's still waiting for the internet to do that first post on his blog).

and what's interesting to me is how organic it is (hmm, maybe this proves that husband is right)...with things growing and changing in a dynamic process all the time. i had an idea about how blog camp 1.0 would be and while it was, in some ways, how i imagined it, it was also very different. because you have to factor in the people involved. and now, we're having blog camp 1.5 with five of the same people from BC1.0 plus two more and i'm really excited to see how that changes the dynamic and perhaps even the concept. because it's difficult to predict anything when there are people involved. i'm certain only that it will be fantastic, but i can't foresee in what ways.

i saw a list yesterday of potential things to do at BC 2.1 (as we've dubbed it) in reno. and it struck me that a list of activities--none of which involved pajamas or blogging--was a new incarnation of the concept. although we did see the mermaid, for those of us at BC 1.0, it was really about meeting the people behind the blogs and doing some of the things--e.g. taking pictures and drinking lots of coffee and wine--that we love to do in the blogosphere together in person.

and after my initial confusion and a bit of wondering whether i hadn't been clear on the concept (i reread and i, in fact, had been pretty clear), i took a deep breath and realized that it was all ok. because we can't really know what will happen with the things we create and we have to be prepared to release them and let them become whatever they become to others who embrace those ideas. and i realized that was actually a pretty powerful thing.

and speaking of blog camp 2.0 - there are still a couple of spots, so please do let me know if you'd like to come! it'll be a blast and well worth the trip, i promise.

blog camp: different yet the same

there were a couple of moments at the beginning of blog camp, when we were wandering around copenhagen and i felt a little bit like this place was far too small. and that's because twice we ran into someone i knew. first, at the airport, we almost missed B and polly because i was talking to an old friend i ran into. then, at nyhavn, those crazy guys who had been working for some hours on their buzz before the ACDC concert (they actually remembered running into us, because the one i knew left a message on my wall on facebook that indicates he remembered!)

just to clarify these guys for all of you who were deeply confused by our strange posts during blog camp...guy on the left, friend of guy on the right (who i knew and used to work with). both were very drunk at 6 p.m. since they'd had quite a few beers and possibly some nasty licorice vodka during the four-hour train ride to copenhagen. they were going to attend an ACDC concert later that evening. guy on the left really wanted to play with my camera, but i wouldn't let him--he's also the one we pretended was seaside girl. at one stage, he took a little nap in his chair (next to polly), then suddenly woke up and burst into "singin' in the rain" (it was raining at that point), which seemed a little at odds with the whole ACDC concert thing.

* * *

the rain cleared and upon slipping free of the drunks gentlemen sailors above, we made our way on the train to my house. i was fine until we were two houses up the street from our house and then suddenly i had a major case of butterflies. the more i think about blog camp and how i felt leading up to it, our house was my biggest worry--whether they would like it. i'm not sure why that is, except that i feel it so strongly reflects who we are that i was worried that if they didn't like it, then they wouldn't like me.

when we arrived, husband had placed this stump and all of the axes in the household out front, which was great, because it broke the tension i felt.

he and sabin had also locked the doors and put up signs saying the house closed at 7 p.m. (it was by then 8:45 or so). they had left a little tray of sandwiches outside the back door, but apparently the cat had eaten them as only some tomatoes were left. somehow, i didn't manage to take pictures of those signs (i'm sure others did and hope they will post them), but they were quite hilarious. finally, they did let us in and we opened some wine and set about the business of picking places to sleep (we drew names out of a cup) and then ate a simple dinner of cheese and sausage and homemade bread and hummus. 

it was chilly from all the rain and husband had started a fire for us in the wood-burning stove in the blue room, so we moved out there for more wine and strawberries and cream and lots of laughter. we diffused some of the wonderful gingery-lemony "blog camp blend" of essential oils that the fragrant muse had been kind enough to send to us (among other things) as a special treat (more about that later today on the blog camp blog). and we laughed and talked about blogs and blogging and whether we were like our blogs 'til the wee hours. 

B has perhaps said it best on her blog as to whether we are like our blogging voices. and i feel largely that we were. the biggest surprise for me was polly, who is quite serious on her blog but is very funny and a bit more wacky in person. kristina didn't join us for the evening, having parted with us in copenhagen to go home to sweden, but we realized that although she blogs largely through images, those had given us a good idea of her voice--pictures really are worth a thousand words. seaside girl, who we had gotten to know better from her blog in the month or so leading up to blog camp, was very like her blog self, as am i (we know i don't hide that much of who i am here). i would say that extranjera was actually nicer than i expected her to be...by which i mean less sarcastic and cynical that she seems (for humorous effect, which we totally get) on her blog. as she said herself, "i'm really quite pleasant." and she is.

best of all, tho' was the way there was no one dominant person and no underdog. no one person was ever the single object of ridicule--it shifted nicely (me and the stains on my shirt, polly's posing, seaside girl's open mouth in all pictures, extranjera's crouching, b's closed eyes, kristina's butcher knife in the head). no one was albanienated at any time. and i didn't have to be mother hen and protect anyone from being left out/bullied. in other words, we were all totally cool, capable adults who rocked blog camp. yay for us! and frankly, i didn't really expect it to be any other way, tho' you do worry anytime you gather a group of women. i think five (sometimes six) was an excellent number--three is no good, then it's always two against one, but with five, there's always someone on your side (see evidence in the comments of this post).

in all, blog camp was a resounding success and i'd do it again in a minute. like in august in the UK, at bee's house (she apparently has a very cool and understanding husband as well). and then, of course, there's blog camp 2.0, right here at blog camp ground control in denmark. two of the four spots are spoken for, so check those ticket prices today! you don't wanna miss out on scenes like this:

blog camp: reflections on the beginning

when you plan for something big, you have all of this anxious build-up to it...both literally and in your mind. you imagine what it will be like and you plan for what it will be like. with blog camp, it was the same. only it was difficult to really imagine what it would be like. it was a little strange to think of meeting five people who i'd never met in real life, but felt like i knew through their blogs--what would they be like for real? what kind of chemistry would be there between the group? or, even worse, might there not be chemistry between the group members? yikes. so many thoughts.

with all of the personalities and talk of tiaras, would anyone be a prima donna? would we all be? would it make it insufferable? or would there be one nice person who got crushed under the force of stronger personalities? or would one person dominate totally? would the weekend go quickly or drag on endlessly? so many questions.

so, in the end, all i could really do to mentally prepare was get ready in the physical sense...house cleaned and tidied, beds ready for people to sleep in, food and drink supplies laid in. if the house was ready i would be ready.

and largely, i would say that i never second-guessed the decision to invite five strangers to come hang out at my house for a weekend. it was done a bit on a whim and quite possibly began as a joke on husband's part (he should know better by now), but i never regretted it, even if i couldn't really imagine what it would be like.

i headed for the airport on friday with good butterflies. i had a sense of trying to consciously preserve the "first time-ness" of the experience--because you only have one first time experience of anything. and it's not that often that you know you're going to experience something for the first time--most of the time, things just happen and they end up being the first time. this was a unique opportunity. i knew i was going to meet my blog camp friends for the first time. and that felt somehow special.

my only doubts as i headed there were, "oh dear, will i recognize everyone?" i thought i'd know extranjera and B and polly, but i'd never seen seaside girl or kristina, so i wasn't sure. we'd made a plan that i'd buy a little flag from each country and be standing there waving those and they would thereby find me. however, i got to the airport and realized i didn't know for sure what the flags of poland and spain looked like and the shop was out of all of the others! yikes! so, i'd have to hope they recognized me.

i saw kristina first, she was leaning against a big pillar near starbucks, where we had agreed to meet. although she didn't look as i expected, i knew it was her right away from the way she looked at me like she recognized me. she had spotted extranjera, sitting in the starbucks and we went over to greet her. we knew it was her from the murakami she was reading. (oops, still owe a discussion on that one on the hermit book club blog).

i'd had word from polly and B that their flight was delayed, but we knew that seaside girl would arrive soon from gatwick, so we went over to wait. we giggled quite a lot about how we would recognize her since none of us had much of an idea how she would look...we couldn't even really agree on what she'd said about her recent haircut. thankfully, she recognized us and came right up to us. we all immediately started laughing and headed back over to starbucks to wait for B & polly's flight to come in.

we chatted away, only having a couple of minutes here and there of wondering what to say next. but it helped that we felt we knew one another from our blogs. then, it was time for B & polly's flight. while we were waiting, we tried to catch a photo of a weird nu skin cult leader girl for molly's sake, but kept missing the opportunity (ok, it was me who was too slow to get out the damn iPhone at the right time). at last, just when their flight had disappeared entirely from the sign and we were beginning to wonder if they had had to report a lost bag, they came out. and we were off towards the train to the center of copenhagen.

i entered my usual chaos mode and it took extranjera and i quite a bit of discussion to determine how many tickets to buy and which color of clip card was best, but soon, we were on a train and stowing their bags at the central station in copenhagen so we could be free to walk around.

it was so much fun walking around the city, cameras constantly at the ready, seeing copenhagen anew through their eyes. and it was quite amazing how quickly any nervousness and awkwardness melted very quickly away. i suppose because we did, in many ways, know one another quite well through our blogs and everyone proved to be very like their bloggy self.

more later from the first evening...

in the aura of blog camp 1.0

i'm still basking in the afterglow of blog camp 1.0. it was a success beyond my wildest expectations (and my expectations were quite wild). i'm still processing all of the many thoughts and feelings that are tumbling through my brain but after two action-packed days, two very late nights and relatively early mornings in a row (and some lovely patron tequila), i am rather exhausted, so those will have to wait before tumbling out onto the page.

i came home from the airport just in time to grill sausages and halloumi and marshmallows with my family and then i retired to the upper garden with mma ramotswe (i've got the new one) and a glass of wine (yup, i could still drink wine). husband came up and sat with me for awhile, but soon, i was snoozing away. and my snooze turned into a two hour nap in the late-afternoon sunshine, lulled to sleep by the songs of the birds overhead. blog camp was pretty tiring. :-)

i'll be sharing some of the pictures/highlights/impressions/reflections all week, both here and on the blog camp blog.

but for now, thank you girls (and they were all girls, despite our little jokes trying to convince otherwise), for a beautiful weekend! be sure to visit B and extranjera and kristina and polly and seaside girl to see their impressions this week as well. and don't forget to check in on the blog camp blog, because we've got some post-blog camp 1.0 fun planned there. and if you have specific questions you'd like us to answer, please ask them over there, so all can answer!

the god(desse)s of the blogosphere have been kind

some calm, restful images to help calm my mounting excitement over the impending arrival of blog camp.  tomorrow around noon, extranjera, B, polly, seaside girl and kristina will either arrive or meet me at the copenhagen airport. all of the last preparations are being made, the cleaning girl is here, and i'm feeling ready. but i definitely can't sit still. in some ways, it's quite extraordinary and remarkable that this is really happening. an idea thrown out one sunday on a whim, now coming to fruition.

i think it's really brave of five people who have never met me, except here on my blog, to buy plane tickets (for four of them) and come to stay at my house in another country for a whole weekend. it's like beyond belief cool. and i am in awe of their bravery. all kinds of crazy, "am i good enough thoughts" have crossed my mind, but those are mostly quiet now. i think we can't help but have a fantastic time. we hope you'll follow along with the madcap antics all weekend over on the blog camp blog. and hopefully, it will inspire you to want to be part of blog camp II in september.

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and speaking of amazing people in cyberspace...you must go check out the latest guerilla marketing from stacey childs of discounderworld. she's got to be the coolest kiwi out there. while you're there, be sure to order your copy of the Gold Edition of Discounderworld (it's so exciting i actually used capital letters)! 

don't you just love the idea of guerilla marketing? and the whole way that ideas happen here in this bloggy world and then people get involved and suddenly things happen in reality and not only in cyberspace. i love that about the blogosphere. 

stoned. in a good way.

a few weeks ago, trinsch of the lovely, carefree hairstyle fame (which i am too uncoordinated to duplicate, by the way, tho' i tried), had a corner view: the beach post which had some really beautiful stones in it. there was a picture of them lying in their natural state in the sand and then in a beautiful little stack. i asked her to upload that little stack to flickr so i could favorite it, because you know i have a totally minor and not at all requiring meds or excess baggage fees thing about stones. happily, she obliged and i was content.

and then, today, a little envelope arrived in my mailbox.

fabulous handwriting! cool stone with a hole in it! could it get any better? why yes, it could!

inside the pretty little bag were those very stones trinsch gathered on the beach in israel! how awesome is that? but wait, it gets even better.

that little white stone at the bottom (at 5:30) is a little piece of marble. trinsch says that it's from the historical site of caesarea--the ruins of a roman city--2000 years old. italian marble, washed and rounded and smoothed in the sea for hundreds of years, washes up on the beaches in israel, near the historical site. but my very favorite one is the little round grey one right beside it (at 7:30)--it's smooth and perfect.

trinsch's beautiful picture of them in their natural habitat

from trinsch's picture, i imagined that the stones were larger (tho' husband made fun of me for that, asking how large i imagined the bits of sand were), but i am madly in love with them and not the least bit disappointed that they are small--they're absolutely perfect! than you so much, trinsch, for making my monday! in fact, i'm sure it will actually make my whole week! 

today, trinsch has a lovely post featuring a typecase from her childhood where she displays stones and shells found on beaches around the world. you should go have a look at it, it will make your monday less weird, i promise.

fabulosity all around (and a giveaway)

i'm all for looking at the world differently, with fresh eyes, from a new perspective. wearing orange tights with red shoes and taking photos of my feet against the green grass in front of a snotty spa hotel in skodsborg while i wait for husband. but seriously, i have to draw the line somewhere and that somewhere is here.  apparently nancy reagan gets regular visits from ronnie during which he talks to her. i always knew the woman was nuts. tho' admittedly running the US by astrology does seem better in retrospect than the 8 years of the bush administration.

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A VERY BIG THANK YOU!! so big, i had to use actual capital letters, so that's big. thanks to all of you and your votes, my story will make the print issue of disco underworld. i quite literally couldn't have done it without you, so to celebrate, i'm going to give away one of my helleristning stones.  if you want to be entered to win, please leave a comment on this post. i think i will make an entirely new helleristning on one of my stones from my recent trip to norway, so this picture is just a sample. you will get a totally new, unique to you, very own helleristning. :-)

so, to review: leave a comment to win a helleristning stone on a stone from norway. it's my thanks to you for helping me make the print issue of discounderworld! and speaking of discounderworld, there's a new issue out now, full of cool people and things! you can go read it right after you finish reading here. :-)

my lovely assistant (i haven't decided yet whether it's sabin or husband) will draw the winner on friday.

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did you know that you're limited to 200 characters in labels? it's practically a tweet. i'm feeling restricted!

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and while i was sitting here, killing time waiting for magazine proofs and in between last-minute edits and trying to shoo a bumble bee out of the addition (they get totally confused by the big windows), the mailman knocked on my door. he brought me this:

a package from the fabulous (i know, i'm overusing that word, i can't help it, there's just so much fabulousity) lynne of wheatlands news. and look what was inside!

rocks and toys and cards, oh my!

and lynne's 82-year-old mom made the cards.

i love that!!

these are seriously cool toys!

husband is gonna love these.

and so is sabin.

i might have to hide them and play with them all by myself.

and each of these rocks is cooler than the next!

lynne calls us stone freaks rotsifarians--b/c rots is rock in afrikaans--i LOVE that too!

the flat one is from namibia

the others are from diamond diggings at alexander bay

the red one is a "red luck stone" because it indicates the presence of diamonds (cool!)

and the little one is covered in eyes!!!

i love the little beaded doll too. 

it appeals to my superstitious side.

THANK YOU LYNNE!!!

i love having these little pieces of africa right here in denmark.

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blog camp note:  don't forget about blog camp II scheduled for september 4-7 here in denmark. i have room for 4 and one spot is tentatively booked. all of you north americans should be checking ticket prices right now (i hear air france is having a sale (ha, bad joke, but i couldn't resist)). but seriously, there are some good prices out there, so do book ahead! and if you're coming all that way, we can arrange for spending a bit more time than just a long weekend.  there may be one more blog camp during 2009 in the US--we're in the tentative stage of planning a trip and just might make time for a few days of blog camp fun sometime in the autumn. stay tuned for updates on that one.

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don't forget to check out the latest issue of disco underworld now.

there are lots of cool and creative people featured this month!