HOCO Thursdays- When the blogging world and the real world collide

Do you know where I went last night?  To a party.  ON A SCHOOL NIGHT.   I know, I couldn't believe it either.

So I live in Howard County and I'm a blogger which qualifies me for Hoco Blogs.  And once a month they have a blogger party.  This is what I learned at this party.

1) Ian is a real person.  Remember a few weeks ago when I posted about my road and then I wrote about it here:   Yep. I meant the County executive's chief of staff, in person.  And he's awesome.  And I'm NOT just saying that because there's a very good likelihood he's reading this blog.  He was down to Earth and talked honestly about local government.  

2) I met TJ. A few days ago, an email appeared in my inbox, and you might not know this about me but I'm a little OCD about checking my inbox.  Anyway he found my blog and asked if he could quote me in an article for The Patch about blogging.   He, too, is awesome. You can read the article here.

3) Elizabeth she is the editor for The Patch in Elkridge.  In a work...awesome.   Are you detecting a trend here?

4) Blogger in Howard County come in all shapes, ages, ethnic background.  As soon as I walked in to the Stain Glass Pub, i felt like I instantly belonged.   Every blogger I spoke with genuinely cared about connecting with other bloggers and sharing their interests IRL (in real life- for those of you who aren't down with the tech speak)

5)Jessie Newburn ROCKS at throwing parties.  She runs the hocoblogs.com website and organized the par-tay.  She came around talked with everyone-- she very cool tech guru who is reaching out to the communities of Howard County and trying to bring us all together.  Oh and something magical will happen if I do the hocoblogs@@@ in my blog post.  go to hocoblogs.com to see what it was.

6) Blogging, like writing, always felt like a solo thing I did.  It wasn't until Mo suggested I join hocoblogs that I ever considered writing about my home town.

7)The food at The Stain Glass Pub was amazing (you thought I was going to say awesome, did you?)

8) People like free drinks... they really really like them.  Our waitress seemed shocked when I ordered a sprite, I think I was the only adult drinking a soda.  Didn't everyone else know it was school night?  To go along with that, our waitress was nothing sure of amazingly awesome.

9) I was stressed about writing this post because I have a shameful confession.

10) I'm a sticker slut.   (Although some of them my daughter put on me)

I had a sticker that said #geek but I'm pretty sure with my shirt it was a little redundant.

But... You're famous!!

Ok so I had written a super lame post about how I epicly failed at writing this week.  Seriously I wrote a paragraph.  But between the plague living in my nose and now my lungs, a 425 page book I need to teach (it's a pretty awesome book and I've never taught a book that I WANTED to read before), and Plants Verses Zombies, I've been busy. 
Frankly next week doesn't look like it's going to be any better.

But then I saw this:

SHANNON MESSANGER COMMENTED ON MY BLOG!!!   AND SHE'S FOLLOWING IT!  WHAT?!?  HUH?!? SERIOUSLY.... DOES SHE KNOW HOW AWESOME SHE IS?   WHAT IS SHE DOING READING MY BADLY EDITED RANTS AND RAVES?...

Her blog is amazing!  It's sweet and honest and funny AND she personally writes back to every comment... how does she have time to do that?  My working theory, she has a time machine and she's not sharing it. 

And I"m not just saying all that because she runs a give away for MG books every month.

oh my god, what if she just read that I wrote that I think she's awesome.   Now she knows!  Now she must think I'm a totally fan girl stalker.  Crap.

It's not like I'm going to sniff her hair or anything.   You can't sniff hair via internet, it's doesn't have a smell... it's just smells like my desk, wood and forgotten  lemonade and that weird metallic smell from my mac.

Crap what if she read that too.   

But wait did you see the second comment?  Elena Johnson!  This chick has like a billion and a half followers and has a new book coming out and is pretty much made out of awesome instead of water and goo on the inside.   

Shannon and Elena created a little thing called writeoncon, the highlight of my summer!!!  

AND THEN KRISTEN HUBBARD,--- SHE'S THE ONE WHO WROTE THE BOOK WHO INSPIRED THE ROAD TRIP.   OH MY BLARG... I CAN'T EVEN SPEAK IN REAL WORDS.

Here's the thing, these women did it.  They wrote books, they found an agent, their books will be on the shelves very soon.   They gave me hope.

Today I was talking to my media specialist during the Book Fair (Yay it's Book Fair Time!)  She pointed out to all the books that surrounded us and said, "Aren't you grateful for all the people who took the time to write the book for us to read."

Yes. Yes I am.

THANK YOU!

I just died.