Party Hopping at BlogHer 08: Part I

Union Square, taken from our hotel room window.

Thursday night at BlogHer 08 absolutely rocked. I felt like a celebrity superstar, schlepping from one party to the next and hobnobbing with all the sponsors, including the wonderful folks from Johnson & Johnson and MomCentral, who started the evening off right with the first meet-up at 5 PM.

The BlogHer conference is being held at the Westin St. Francis this year, a hugely swanky hotel full of conference rooms and suites and even a shopping avenue with a Victoria's Secret (or, as the girls today call it, Vic's).

In the lobby of the St. Francis is the hotel bar, called Caruso's, and this is where MomCentral and J&J set up shop, footing the bill for drinks for all of us invitees. That's right, this was an invite-only party. And I was on the A-list, Baby! Why? Well, you have seen my reviews on the blog courtesy of MomCentral, and you might remember that back in April I headed out with a group of Mommy Bloggers to Camp Baby, on behalf of J&J. And, fabulous folks that they are, they both remembered me. So I actually got TWO invites. Woohoo! Heady stuff, fame. ; )

Anyway, in addition to the free drinks (as if you really needed anything more), books were laid out for bloggers to look through, and maybe pick a few up and take back to review on their sites, if the fancy took them.

Funny story: I am looking at all these wonderful books, and I turn to the lady next to me and say, "Wow, don't these just inspire you to write a book yourself?"

And she says, "Actually, I did. And that's my book right there. Would you like me to sign it for you?"

I swear to you, that's exactly how it went down, unlikely as it sounds, and that's how I met Diane MacEachern, author of Big Green Purse, a book about "using your spending power to creat a cleaner, greener world."

And of course I spoke to all the great folks from J&J and MomCentral, who are so sweet that, although they had thoughtfully made up impressive name badges for all of us, completely neglected to think of themselves, and so were walking around with pen-scrawled stick-ems they had hastily concocted. Isn't that just like us women, thinking of everyone else first and ourselves last?

I also ran into Lindsey Grossman, who is working on Raggs (more about Raggs and other fun stuff for your kids soon), PHAT Mommy, Tracee from SoSiouxMe, BusyMom, Lara from Notions of Identity, the SoCal Moms in the elevator (all of them looking chic and fashionable), and Liz from This Full House.

And that was just the FIRST party of the evening!