BFF: A small re-cap

Friday night's Random House cocktail party was a great time - it doesn't get much better than free food and drinks, copies of a great book and temporary tattoos!

Our roundtable discussion on Saturday was all about – wait for it…blogging. Being able to get together like that – armed with ridiculously expensive hotel munchies and our laptops – and have open dialogue was really cool. Initially, we touched on why we’d started blogging and being a part of this, the blogsphere, which lead us to other topics – privacy, dry spells, the pressures of blogging, what we do and don’t write about, commenting and comments – and we spent a good hour going around the table sharing a blog that, for whatever reason, really spoke to us. Good stuff. (For a list of as many of the blogs mentioned as I can remember, check out the end of this post.)

(An aside: if you’re ever in Niagara Falls and are looking for a hotel that can offer reliable Internet, think twice before coughing up to stay at the Hilton. Despite the fact that they’d known for months that we’d be there for a BLOGGING event, the Internet connection during our discussion was spotty at best and there was nobody on hand (besides Sci-Fi Dad, who was able to get several of us online for a spell by simply standing by our laptops) who was in the know that could help us. To say the least, it was frustrating, not to mention quite disappointing.)

We split up for lunch before meeting up again for either a wine tour or a cross-border shopping run. A few of us arrived at the Jackson-Triggs wine tour in style - a HUGE thanks to Ford for the Flex! Our tour guide, a somewhat scrawny-looking guy named Marcus who had a faux-hawk and appeared to be not a day over 21, turned out to be really good – he was super informative and the tour itself was really interesting. Most importantly, the wine was good (and there was lots of it!).

When we got back we had just enough time to change before hitting up the Hard Rock for dinner. It was really, really loud in there, but the food was good and so was our waitress. We had a Hote(l) Party at the hotel afterward that involved zombies and mannequins and zombie mannequins and twats and twits and side-splitting laughter and CLEARLY, several bottles of wine.

We made our way out slowly on Sunday; most of us opted out of the Maid of the Mist in favour of swimming at the hotel (there was a curly slide!) and grabbing food before leaving.

Thanks to everyone who helped organize this weekend, to our sponsors and to everyone who came and was a part of it. It was a blast, and I can’t wait to do it again next year.

Blogs that were mentioned during our roundtable discussion:

Pickled Beef
Woman in a Window
Julia {Here Be Hippogriffs}
Simply Shenuts
Hoping For Grace
The Not-so Secret Life of Katie Valentine
Circle of Life
Cheaper Than Therapy
Six Until Me
Kevin Charnas
Sweet/salty
So Close
Uppercase Woman     
Life on the Roof
Slightly Less Cynical
My Tragic Right Hip
Life: The Ongoing Education
It's Not All Mary Poppins
Nonlinear Girl

Comments

[daysgoby]

YES!!!

A few hours ago I was questioning the kids, gestapo-style, on who had stolen my (white, unlined, creased) piece of (folded) notebook paper that had my list of whom we spoke about at BFF - thank you for posting this!

[ali]

me? you discussed me???

what did you say? (only good things i hope ;) )

[Kerri.]

Hey, thanks for making my blog part of your Roundtable discussion. I'm honored! (And hopefully not in any trouble. ;) )

[Multi-Tasking Mommy]

Thanks for mentioning me....although I have a sneaking suspicion as to who brought me up ;) Ahem....SciFi Dad!