I don’t know how to say “prize” in Spanish, sorry.

I’d like to thank Jenn of You Are Flawed If You Are Not Free, for showing me some blogger love. I just submitted my last assignment for this wretched online course, checked the Bloglines, and there it was! I needed a little Brillante today. Super F-word yeah!

So now it’s my turn… you know how I lurve judging people, so without further ado, the award goes to:

Dolce, for making me think marriage might not be a hellhole after all. Where do I go to find a PH clone?

Joy at Big Time Fancy, for giving boys code names and keeping me in good company by talking about way too many of them way too much.

Lindz at Couture Me if You Can, for always having a post that mentions some part of the anatomy normally covered by swimwear.

Supergirl, who gave me my first blog award ever and never fails to amuse, even if she’s talking about Nebraska. Your mom revoked the wedding. That’s awesome.

Jenn, because I can tell her SECRETS about CRUSHES!

And Paige, an incredibly Brillante writer who has probably received this award a dozen times and is too modest to put it on her page.

————-

And the unrelated things:

Yes, school is done for me just as it is starting for many of you. My genius plan has been cast aside due to the fact that I just don’t like this field of work. And who wants a degree in Project Management when she doesn’t want to be a project manager anymore? Not I, friends. The job hunt has begun.

Does anyone know what happened to A Girl Interrupted and Penelope? Penelope’s blog is gone completely and Girl Interrupted hasn’t updated in a month and hasn’t returned email.

This is the interim blog design. I have no idea why I put the red couch picture on the old one, but I couldn’t stand it one day and just had to do something. Since the name of the blog is changing, I went ahead and made that little picture up there and turned everything blue. Delicious Design Studio is going to make it soooo much better soon, but in the meantime… I just don’t know WHY I put that couch up there… blech. Gone.

How do blog awards get started, anyway? Do people just make them up and send them around? Like, could I make one that looks like a suitcase and call it a… I don’t know, some pun on baggage… and just hand it out?

Captain and I have texted a bit and we are going to get together next time he is in town – whenever that happens to be. Hm. Yeah.

One of the top searches that led people to my blog today was “find a hot boyfriend.” How the heck do the search engines think I can help with THAT?

I knew it would make for halfway-decent blog fodder.

I went, as planned, to meet KK and her friends (including Captain) out at a bar last night. I’d never been to the place before, so I walked through the neighborhood on the phone with KK as she gave me directions.

“There, I think I see it. A green awning?”

“Yep. And when you go inside, just head straight to the back and then turn right and that’s where they are.”

“You mean where YOU are.”

“I’m on my way to work, actually, I got called in. But they’re all still there.”

“They who?”

“Well, Captain of course, and my boyfriend, and their friend and two girls I know. Don’t worry, they’re cool, it’ll be fun.”

Huh. Two people I barely know, three complete strangers and no KK? But since I was all dolled up and at my someplace-to-go, I shrugged and went in. I found the group, introductions were made, and I wound up sitting next to Captain and having a much less awkward chat than I had envisioned.

Awkward, however, appeared in the form of my least favorite ex-boyfriend – the one who’d screamed at me, the one who’d called me a whore and a bitch and told me he loved me all in the same sentence, the one who’d stood in front of a doorway and pushed me when I tried to walk out on him once, the one who’d bruised my arm in a car door and not on accident. I actually took a friend along as a witness when I finally got the courage to tell him to get out of my life.

“Oh, crap,” I breathed when I saw him. I knew he saw me. Captain heard me, and I told him that the ex across the room was evil and forbidden to come and talk to me under any circumstances.

He sized him up. “I could probably take him. Or at least smash a beer bottle over his head.” Ah, so he’s an officer and a gentleman.

“I just wanted to explain in advance that I might become a screaming shrew because that person comes over here. I’ll smash the beer bottle on him myself if warranted.” That got a laugh. But I didn’t get my chance to be the bar brawler that night. About two seconds later, someone at the party upstairs spilled a beer over the balcony onto KK’s boyfriend, and a fight ensued when security went up to kick the guys out. We all decided to hit the road after that and I walked out, head held high, right by the ex’s table. Crisis averted.

At the next bar I started to make friends with the girls. They decided that since I drink beer and am single and reasonably fun, I’m their new bestie and we will all party together. Excellent. It appeared, however, that as the new bestie I am also fair game for teasing about Captain. How these people who had never met me before decided that we should be together, I do not know.

“Did you guys make out?” one of the girls squealed after he and I had gone up to the bar on a drink run.

“Um, no. We brought you beer.”

“Well you SHOULD! He’s into you.”

“That’s… good…”

But at least I’d gotten pretty comfortable talking to the guy. We talked about college and Virginia and music. He asked me to sing in the band he and KK’s boyfriend are starting. The initial awkwardness was mostly gone, and when he put his arm around me in a flirty way I didn’t mind. The other guy in our group (not KK’s boyfriend) did the same thing when he and I were talking. Who knows, I thought, maybe these Army guys just like to hug. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

We closed down that bar at 1:30 and headed off to a 3:00 bar, the latest they can stay open in this town. When Captain and KK’s man went off to play darts, the other guy came up and got a little huggy on me again. Ohhhkay… and when he went to get drinks, the girls started squealing again.

“No, don’t flirt with HIM! Captain likes you!”

“And besides, HE is married!”

“Is he now?” I queried. It occurred to me that, since I really had no interest in the guy, I hadn’t even done the ring check. But sure enough, when he came back with something called Cherry Cola shots, there it was. I had to call him out on it; he’d been flirting and hugging different girls all night. If that were my husband, blood might be shed.

“So, how long have you been married?” I asked bluntly.

His face lit up for a moment. “Since July 20th,” he said, and then just as quickly his expression sobered. “She’s deployed now.” For how long, I asked. “A year,” he said, shaking his head.

“I’m sure that’s hard.”

“It’s awful,” he sighed, pulling out his phone. “See? This is her.” He flipped through a bunch of pictures of the two of them in Hawaii on their honeymoon. And then the boy started hugging me again, a smooshy hug, not a flirty one, as though he needed me to comfort him in the middle of the bar. “It’s just so, so hard,” he kept saying. What could I do? I hugged back.

The girls just stared. I shrugged as best I could in the hug, and weaseled out before Captain and KK’s boyfriend came back over to the table. We stayed till last call, Captain still giving me little squeezes here and there and the girls giggling when they saw it. Everyone piled into the cars, Captain in mine of course, and we drove back to KK’s to hang out for a bit. I was getting ridiculously tired – it was almost 4 am at that point – and said my goodbyes.

“Wait a sec,” Captain said as I was heading out the front door. “I left my shirt in your car.” He’d ditched the button-down earlier and was just wearing his t-shirt. “I’ll walk out with you and get it.”

Giggles and winks from the girls! Surely this was planned!

It was a beautiful night and I was carrying my shoes, opting to walk through the cool, dewy grass instead of on the hard concrete. Captain fished his shirt out of the back of the Jeep and we stood there talking for a little while; he had one arm around me again and then both. Hugs. Goodnight kisses. I drove home with wet grass clinging to my feet.

I still don’t know if there’s a click. Shouldn’t I be able to tell by now? Shouldn’t there be fireworks and breathless kisses and sexual frustration? Or is this that weird thing called “taking it slow?” I think I’ve heard of that. Maybe I should try it sometime.

—————————

Oh, and just for fun, I’ll throw in the fact that Tim was texting me for about an hour – where are you, wanna come over, call me when you get home, etc. He was Air Force though, so I don’t think he just wanted a hug.

Conference, schmonference. The only thing of note during conference time on Friday was that it was freaking FREEZING in there. During the morning inbrief, a nice man saw me shivering and let me borrow his blazer. I got a cup of coffee just to warm my hands, and I didn’t take a sip. I was wearing a button-down shirt and a linen skirt, not a bikini. But brr!

So I did what any reasonable girl on Michigan Avenue would do. I skipped out of the fifteen-minute break/networking session and trotted across the street to the North Face store in the Hancock Building. I bought this:

It looked nice over my white button-down, although with the patch on the sleeve and the skirt I was wearing, I felt a bit like I was ditching class from my private school. Maybe I should have gotten this one instead.

It might have been even more appropriate. That and ski pants.

But I escaped without losing any digits to frostbite, and headed out into the fierce Chicago sunshine to go get ready to meet more of the blog posse.

I will pause here for a moment and explain the title of this post. I have a coworker who refers to my blogger pals as my “imaginary friends” since all I do is type and Twitter to you guys and have never met any of you face to face before this trip. NS, look! You’re finally being mentioned in a post! EAT THAT!

“Jess said she’d be wearing a blue shirt,” I said. “I think I know what she looks like, but not the others.”

“Yeah I saw the pictures she posted from BlogHer,” Jenn added as we scanned the plaza. “But why was she wearing a cheeseburger bag on her head?”

Even without her distinctive headwear, we found Jess. Three more lovely lady bloggers joined us – it should have been four, but noooo, Jamie just HAD to go to Lollapalooza and send eleventy-three Tweets that had us all checking our phones and envying her. I was the newbie in the group and I hadn’t read everyone and everyone hadn’t read me, but it took about three and a half minutes for me to feel like I was catching up with old friends that I hadn’t seen in awhile, rather than meeting new people that I’d be afraid wouldn’t like me.

This does go back to my theory of the Six Degrees of Blogroll. In the same way that we’ve always chosen our friends, we choose what we read. As we’ve all grown and gotten out of high school and college cliques, sororities, and organized extracurriculars, the friend-market becomes almost as tricky as the mate-market. I have no idea how to “make friends” with a girl, really. My only new female friends post-college have been from work. You can’t just go pick up friends at a bar.

But when you read a blog and you recognize some sort of friend material in that blogger, you read again. And then you click on that person’s blogroll and find someone who the blogger you like likes, because that person exudes the friend vibe to the blogger you like, and it’s the same vibe you get from that first one. So you read another blog. And click another link, and read another blog, and realize that one or two of them have been reading you and added you to a blogroll. The Six Degrees of Blogroll becomes a circle of friends who have met and friends to be made, and when you meet, you hug.

Among the six of us we didn’t finish one deep-dish at Giordano’s, and we took our takeaway bags down the street to a pub called Elephant & Castle* for a few beverages. Conversation ranged from jobs and politics to relationships and the relative size of one’s ass. At one point late in the evening it was down to three of us and a tableful of empty glasses, earnestly discussing the problems of age-centered blog ad networks, the hostile takeover by the mommy-bloggers, and certain people having crushes on other certain people. It was bliss.

So in conclusion, without sounding like a lesbian, may I ask: WHERE ARE ALL THE SINGLE GIRLS IN ST. LOUIS?!?!

And Chicago? Labor Day, bitches. I will see you then.

————

*Giordano’s also does not serve Bud Select.

**Which also does not serve Bud Select.

Day Two, Lessons Learned:

• There are TWO Hiltons on Michigan Avenue.
• Remember to pack your crazy meds before you leave the hotel in the morning.
• Conferences are good because everyone is checking email on their phones, and therefore do not notice that you are Twittering or on AOL.
• Toyota won’t talk to you.

Day Two technically started at 4 am when I remembered that hideous conversation I blogged yesterday. I washed down two Excedrin with a swig of lukewarm Diet Pepsi and slept fitfully for two and a half more hours.

I was actually quite excited to get up and going on Thursday morning. It was my first conference ever, and I put on my lovely black Audrey Hepburn Breakfast-at-Tiffany’s dress with a soft little cardi and round-toe kitten heels. I was professional and fabulous.

Until I got to the lobby and realized my poster was upstairs in my room.

And had the cab take me to the wrong Hilton, sixteen blocks from where I needed to be.

And found out that the foundation that bestowed my conference grant had not paid the invoice for my registration fee.

And discovered I had no business cards in my work bag.

And realized that I was so distracted by my Hepburn fabulousness that I forgot to pack my anti-epiliptics in my little pill box before I left the hotel.

And noted that the complimentary breakfast buffet (at the correct Hilton) included neither sugar nor soda.

I made a mad dash down to the lobby and grabbed a Diet Pepsi and two Krispy Kremes from the coffee bar. Thus fortified, I went back upstairs, claimed a seat in the main conference room, and went out into the lounge to put up my poster: “Using Lean 6-3 to Work Smarter: Massive Transfusion Protocol” (you’re on the edge of your seat, I know). Mine was the biggest and shiniest poster in the room, and with a sinking feeling in my stomach I realized that meant it would probably attract the most attention.

The nervous stomach feeling was compounded by the jitters I get when I don’t have my medicine on time. The donuts and soda helped a bit, but I was sending rapid Twitters and texts to friends. I think my thumbs were shaking. Alone representing Dunder-Mifflin Hospital at the conference, I had to be the one speaking to the people who came to see my poster, and the list of attendees began to terrify me. Executives from Toyota – they invented the Lean processes I wrote about on my poster. Big names from Ford, Ritz-Carlton. Top brass from ThedaCare, Virginia Mason Medical Center, Mt. Sinai Hospital. The President Emeritus of the Joint Commission for Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. The president of the Baldridge Association.

Crap.

The tension eased as the day progressed (thank you all for the reassuring Tweets and texts!) and I actually had a small moment of brilliance when one of the Toyota execs started asking about how we were using Lean to improve clinical outcomes, not just operational processes. That was ALL ME. He came and looked at my poster during the break and I talked about the revolutionary new ways we were using Lean processes to improve patient outcomes (in this case, providing product to alleviate massive hemorrhages where people need their whole blood volume replaced in about 5 minutes, yummy stuff). He nodded and mumbled with a very thick Japanese accent, something that sounded like “very good” (I’m optimistic), then took out his little digital camera and started clicking away at every section of my poster.

I guess that was good. Toyota invented this stuff, and since he didn’t interrogate me or rip my poster up, I’m okay with that.

I won’t bore you with any more conference details aside from the fact that the chicken served at lunch gave me a most uncomfortable stomach, and I left before the last session of the day.

It was beautiful outside, warm but not disgustingly so, and I opted to skip the taxi and walk back to my hotel via the Magnificent Mile. I paused in front of Tiffany’s in my Audrey dress and wished I had another donut. I crossed the bridge and looked at the cars on the lower road and said in my best Elwood voice: “Yep, this is definitely Lower Wacker Drive!” My kitten heels were aching along with my stomach by the time I made it back to my hotel, but no matter. I gulped my medicine down greedily and set about preparing to meet a blog friend for the first time.

That’s right, I had never met a reader before.

Jenn happened to be in town before leaving for Spain, and we’d made plans to meet up for dinner. I’d never met the chick before and when we saw each other we hugged like friends. Reading each other’s personal blogs meant we weren’t strangers – hell, I was just glad she wasn’t some psycho stalker who hacked the real Jenn’s email and was all set up to kill me and toss me in the river. Call it a pleasant surprise. We walked in no particular direction, looking for food and winding up at the House of Blues (which, for the record, does not have Bud Select either), chatting so long before even looking at the menus that I think the waiter got a bit tired of checking on us.

She and I knew the surface of a lot of each other’s stories already and laughed and screeched “Oh my God!” every time more details spilled out. We talked about boys like girls at a sleepover, about exes and crushes and the ones who were mistakes.

“I just pretended to pass out,” I said.

“What?”

“I think he wanted to – you know – and I didn’t, so I pretended that I’d just had too much to drink and passed out.”

“That’s a good way to get out of it.”

I’m glad SOMEBODY approves of me.

And so I made a friend who exists in the real world, without posts and tweets and texts. We were getting geared up for the Chicago Blogger Meet-Up the following night, where we’d both be meeting more people we’d never seen outside our monitors.

Day Two wrapped up in much the same fashion as Day One, in a happy tipsy haze, minus the middle-of-the-night what-have-I-done freakout. (This time it was more of a Jenn-is-great-but-the-rest-of-these-people-COULD-be-psychos freakout.) But really, psychos or not, the blogger ladies give me something to look forward to during the next day of the conference. They promised me pizza.

I’ll start at the end with lessons learned on Wednesday, Day 1 of my Chicago adventure.

• Dora the Explorer will ruin a perfectly good train ride. She incites mayhem in toddlers and will cause them to revolt, a la Ray Bradbury’s “The Veldt.”
• Four-dollar train beers are worth every penny.
• The hotel lobby is not always on the main level of the hotel.
• The shower curtain liner is not always tucked into the tub as it should be.
• Remember to pack pantyhose when packing skirts for a business trip.
• Your favorite beer might not follow you on your travels.
• Your URL might be just as dangerous as your phone number.

As it is every morning, Amtrak was late on Wednesday. This caused me to arrive at my beautiful, beautiful hotel half an hour too late to enjoy the free evening wine reception. I swear, I’m going to sue. But I shook it off, and after unpacking and learning lesson number 5, I set out to explore The Loop for someplace that would sell me pantyhose.

CVS fit the bill, and with that matter well in hand, I went in search of a cheeseburger. I do love good cheeseburgers, the thick ones you can only get at bars with sports on every television, beer that comes in buckets, and at least one video trivia game on the counter. “Stocks and Blondes” fit the bill, and the video trivia was open, much to my delight. I smooshed myself into the corner barstool and began feeding dollar bills into the machine.

The bartender approached me. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“Yeah, can I get a Bud Select and a menu, please?”

Crickets.

“A what?”

I turned around. A neon Bud Light sign glowed in the window, and I raised an eyebrow. “The one lighter than Bud Light,” I explained.

“No, no I know what it is,” he said, shaking his head. “But man, no one’s asked me for that for like, six months. We don’t have it.” He raised an eyebrow back at me as if to ask what planet I am from.

I read the eyebrow. “I’m from Saint Louis.”

“Aw, man, whaddya think about that whole Anheuser-Busch buyout thing?” he asked, leaning on the bar. “Aren’t you people pretty pissed? I mean, that’s gotta SUCK for you guys.” He had a big, snarky grin on his face.

“Yes, thank you for pointing that out. I’d like a Bud Light and a menu, please,” I say drily. The guy was cute, but come on. Salt in the wound, pal.

I turn and start in on the video machine, playing the games while ordering a cheeseburger, medium, no onions, out of the corner of my mouth. Unusually for me, I was sucking at WordBuilder so I turned to a trivia game and started kicking ass. Every time I got on the top score list (not to brag, but this was quite often), I signed as “Rebekah STL” in a silent protest against the bartender’s mockery of my beloved AB.

After finishing my cheeseburger and freeing up both hands, I switched to Taipei. This tile-matching game can start to get a little funny after two pints – so of course, I ordered a third. I played two games and got to level 2 on each, signed the winners’ board, and started another. Just when I got to level 3 (finally!) I heard a voice behind me.

“Wow, you’re really good at that.”

I turned around for a split second and saw a guy in a yellow button-down, kicking back on the barstool next to me. “Thanks,” I say quickly, turning back. “It’s timing me.” My fingers flew across the screen and I squinted to see the pairs, using both hands to tap them and run out of time just before the end of the level. Second place on the winners’ board – not too bad! And as I signed my name…

“Sorry I interrupted you before.” He’s still there… and rather cute, so we do introductions. On telling me his last name, he immediately says “No, it’s not Dutch.”

“I didn’t ask. It doesn’t sound Dutch.”

“It’s German.”

“Um, okay.”

So Not-Dutch and I sit, drinking beer and talking of nothing much. His friend joins us and introduces himself as Tim. Maybe it was three pints of beer talking, maybe it was repressed rage, maybe I just thought I was funnier than I actually am, but I loudly proclaimed that there are too many Tims in the world already, and no one should be called that anymore. He laughs and Not-Dutch looks at me funny (Have you noticed a theme here? People looking at me funny? Welcome to my life.) while Tim explains to me that he had a roommate in college with the same name and blar blar blar.

There was much flirting and witty banter going on, the three of us laughing and tossing out the one-liners and comebacks like Shriners toss candy from those little bikes in parades. Not-Dutch flirts with me and I flirt back. An older man around the corner of the bar from us caught us in a brief moment of silence and said:

“You guys should be recording this. This is some funny shit.”

I’m sure it was. We were all laughing and smiling and in just enough of a buzzy frame of mind that none of our zingers were insulting. Everything was funny. I wish I could share it with you, but I have a slight problem… I cannot remember what on earth we were talking about. Zero. Zip. Nada. And I would have remembered, I think, if I hadn’t had four pints of Bud Light. But if I hadn’t been four pints in, would that conversation have been such “funny shit?” Pause for a second and ponder that.

We went on. Another Guinness, another Black and Tan, another Bud Light. By this point I had forgiven the bartender for his indiscretions and was ready to hug him for being such a delightful and ready source of alcohol. But steam was running low and I vaguely recalled that I had to get up early for a conference in the morning, so I decided to go back to home sweet hotel, a few blocks away.

Not-Dutch walked with me. Well, he walked, I may have been just slightly on the staggering side. But no matter. Fun times, new city, it was all good and the evening ended in a happy haze.

At about 4 am I sat straight up in bed, head pounding, and remembered part of the conversation from the bar.

“What are you doing tomorrow night?” Not-Dutch asked me.

“I’m meeting a friend for dinner.”

“Oh, that’s cool you know people to hang out with while you’re up here for work.”

“Well, I haven’t actually met her yet, she’s one of my blog friends.” (I know, I know. Why did I bring this up?)

“You have a blog?” I nodded. “What do you write about?”

“Boys.” (It just fell out of my mouth. I think the alcohol dissolved my filter.)

“So are you going to write about me?”

“Probably.” (Crap!)

Not-Dutch laughs. “Can I read it?”

AND I GAVE HIM MY URL. IN THE STUPIDEST POSSIBLE FASHION. I TEXTED IT TO HIM.

That was Day One in Chicago.

————

(Not-Dutch, if you’re reading this… hi there, what’s up, had a great time Wednesday, and sorry about those drunk texts on Friday night when I was out with the girls.)