In other words, we attend some conferences for certain reasons, and we attend other conferences for other reasons.  Often, these reasons overlap, and just as often, they do not.  Don’t expect every professional need you have to be satisfied by every conference; you need more than one, to wit, a combo of conferences.

In the long run, however, by attending various types of conferences for various reasons, I have learned far more than I ever learned in graduate school.

At first, everyone at every conference was new to me; even those whose blogs and websites I’d been reading for a while, but had not actually met, seemed new in many ways.   No matter what kind of conference it was, though, I felt I already knew these people somewhat because of their online presence.

Now, since I’m no longer a conference newbie – well, not as much of one as before -  I feel almost as if it’s Old Home Week when I go to a conference.  It’s wonderful to see familiar faces, and just as wonderful to see unfamiliar faces which I know will be familiar at the NEXT conference.  I’m far from being an A-list writer,  but the actual A-list people don’t seem to know how A-list they are and are really, really nice.  (This attitude can be different, though, depending on what kind of conference you’re attending and what kind of expectations you bring to the table.)

I guess you might say I’m thoroughly hooked on conferences.

They have greatly enhanced my ability to do my writing gigs, my social media gigs, my watchdog gigs, my teaching gigs, my help-my-students-become-writers gigs, and my time-to-surf-and-find-new-things gigs.

At each conference, I’m agig agog at the awesomeness of the attendees and presenters.  I’ve never met such smart people in my life.

For a small-town chick like me, it’s been a whole new world.  Alert Aladdin at once.

Another reason I love conferences is that because I’m a small-town chick, there really isn’t anybody close to home who understands what I do for a living.  At conferences, I can have actual conversations with actual people who actually understand!

Conferences help me hone my mad skillz.  Come with me next time and we’ll hone together.

I know they’re big stuff now, and I’m glad because they so totally deserve to be big stuff, but let it be known that I loved them before you did.

But grooving all over Straight No Chaser is something I’ve already done and will continue to do. Here are some things I haven’t done yet:

1.  I really need to mow the grass one more time before the snow covers it.  Why do I need to do this?  Because I’m hosting Thanksgiving, and I don’t want my family to get their knees wet when they walk across my lawn.  And why, you might wonder, would their knees get wet if they walked across my lawn?  You’re not really wondering, are you.  Some of you have been here.

2.  I haven’t taken the huge stack of midterm exams – makeup version – to the Testing Center yet, but I’ll do that tomorrow afternoon.  Pig-genre Flu has taken its toll on my students.

3.  I haven’t washed the fifteen bread pans I used this afternoon yet.  I didn’t even know I owned fifteen bread pans, but I guess I do.  Spread out all over the stovetop and counters as they are, a casual observer might guess that I owned a hundred bread pans.  The dishwasher won’t hold them all, that’s for sure.

4.  I haven’t loaded my Christmas music into my cd jukebox yet, but I’m thinking about it.  I always try to wait until after Halloween, at least, but I do love me some purty Christmas music.  If my mention of this fact has offended anyone, suck it up.  People who take offense at other people’s celebrations make me tired.

5.  I still haven’t stopped humming awesome Beatles’ songs; I’ve been a fan since sixth grade and since I saw “1964″ a couple of weeks ago, the obsession has surfaced again.  (Thank you so very much, Smaller Indiana!!!!)

6.  There are leftovers in my refrigerator that have almost achieved the “science project” level.  I haven’t cleaned it out in a while.  Perhaps I should do that tomorrow.  Yes, tomorrow.  The sun’ll come out tomorrow.  I’ll think about that tomorrow.

7.  In my head, I’m still at Blog World Expo in Vegas.  I haven’t really come home yet.  I mean, I’m home, and back to work, but I’m not entirely here.  Note: this is NOT the same thing as “She ain’t all there.”  Although, there has been some doubt for some time. . . . .

8.  Whenever I use an ordinary trash bag, I see gnats – or worse.  When I use a Repellem trash bag, there are NO bugs to be seen anywhere in the house.  They even take care of the ladybug beetles, which is nothing short of extraordinary for southern Indiana.  I need to order some more Repellem bags.  I haven’t done that for a while.

9.  I still hate Pentax.  Haven’t come down from the shoddy treatment yet.

10.  It’s nearly three a.m. and I have to get up in a few hours.  I always do this on Sunday nights.  When will I ever learn?  Probably never, that’s when.

And now, Carly Simon has begun to sing “bedroom songs, ” so maybe that’s where I’d best go.

Goodnight, dear Blogosphere.

Did you ever “sort of” know someone and wish you could be friends?  I ran into a lady today and she invited me to lunch on Friday, and I’m so excited, my earlobes itch.  How junior high is that?  Well, I’m here to tell you something you already knew:  in many ways, we never outgrow junior high.

The world is full of lovely people, and I truly believe that if we open our eyes and ears and hearts to others, they will respond.  Well, most of them, anyway.  There are some people you can’t kill with a meat axe.

Tomorrow is my last day to sleep until just before my husband gets home from work to sleep in, and I intend to take full advantage of it. My teaching schedule is full, full, full, and this is a wonderful thing indeed. Normal people – whatever THAT is – get up in the morning, and soon I will be getting up at 6:30 and doing a lot of whining about it even while I’m grateful.  I’ll be teaching most of every day, and nights until 9:00.  I like to be busy; it keeps me off the streets.  Our creditors are also glad.

You and I both know that someone will phone me early in the morning.    Twas ever thus.

Listening to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Celebration.

Invested in new washcloths today.  I lead a thrilling life.

I need to get out the Sevin.  My poor tomatoes and rosebushes look like green lace.  Stupid bugs.  Why can’t they eat the weeds?

I’ve got the blog conference withdrawal blues.  Ain’t nothing gonna make me content except another conference.  It’s an addiction; I must be humored in every way.

And now, I’m off to do important things.  You know, like harvest some more cotton and stuff.  Oh, and laundry.  And ice cream.  It’s sugar-free, so it doesn’t count, right?

Getting back so late has made Quotation Saturday late, but better late than never, I hope.  I did decide, however, to feature quotations from Hoosiers this time, so sit back and enjoy.  Some of you won’t be familiar with some of these people, and some of the quotations will be new to some of you, too.  Open your mind and learn, Ed Gruberman. Approach, students. Close the circle at the feet of the master. You have come to me asking that I be your guide along the path of tae-kwon-leep, but be warned. To learn its ways, you must learn the ways of your own soul. Let us meditate on this wisdom now.

1.  I wasn’t afraid to fail. Something good always comes out of failure. –Anne Baxter

2. The most important thing a father can do for his children is love their mother. –Father Theodore Hesburgh

3. The only unnatural sex act is that which you cannot perform. –Alfred Kinsey

4. Damn the sword! When Virginia wanted a sword, I gave her one. Now she sends me a toy! I require bread! The sword is very handsome. I am too old and infirm, as you see, to ever use a sword again, but I am glad that my old mother state has not entirely forgotten me. — George Rogers Clark

5. The four cornerstones of character on which the structure of this nation was built are: Initiative, Imagination, Individuality and Independence. –Eddie Rickenbacker

6. I can well remember the day when the Delaware Indians came suddenly to our house. . . I remember that they took me. . . on their backs through the bushes. I believe the rest of the family had fled, except my mother. . . I was always treated well and kindly; and while I lived with them I was married to a Delaware. He afterwards left me and the country, and went west of the Mississippi. The Delawares and Miamis were then all living together. I was afterwards married to a Miami, a chief, and a deaf man. His name was She-pan-can-ah. After being married to him I had four children- two boys and two girls. My boys both died while young. The girls are living and are here in this room at the present time. . .No, I cannot (return to the white man’s world). . . I have always lived with the Indians; they have always used me very kindly; I am used to them. The Great Spirit has always allowed me to live with them, and I wish to live and die with them. –Frances Slocum

7. I believe that a long step toward public morality will have been taken when sins are called by their right names. –Billy Sunday

8. I received thousands of letters of support from all around the world, all because I wanted to go to school. –Ryan White

9. Art is the only way to run away without leaving home. –Twyla Tharp

10. If you go long enough without a bath, even the fleas will leave you alone. –Ernie Pyle

11. If we die, we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life. –Virgil Grissom

12. It is light that gives mystery to shadow, vibration to atmosphere, and makes all the color notes sing together in harmony. –Theodore Clement Steele

13. Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are. –John Wooden

14. My best traveling was done during winter months when the cold has settled in and my feet are bared; the icy earth quickens my step. -John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed)

15. Most gentlemen don’t like love, they just like to kick it around. –Cole Porter

16. I don’t think I’ll ever be president of anything. –Hoagy Carmichael

17. When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. –Eugene Debs

18. I’ve always been proud of being a Hoosier. When I talk to people, I tell them that. –
Robert Wise

19. Between the war movies I’ve been in and the heavies I’ve played, I have about 1,000 dead behind me. I’ve been killed a good many times, but I took a lot of guys with me. –Claude Akins

20. I live by a man’s code, designed to fit a man’s world, yet at the same time I never forget that a woman’s first job is to choose the right shade of lipstick. — Carole Lombard

21. Many, many of my paintings have come from the first chapter of Moby Dick. — Robert Indiana

22. What we’re doing is important for the future, for our children and our children’s children. –Kenneth Bowersox

23. The world itself looks cleaner and so much more beautiful. Maybe we can make it that way – the way God intended it to be – by giving everyone, eventually, that new perspective from out in space. –Roger B. Chaffee

24. I think we always move from imitation to assimilation to innovation, but I can’t name you 20 people outside those we’ve already recognized who ever got to point three: innovation. –David Baker

25. All my life I wanted to be a bank robber. Carry a gun and wear a mask. Now that it’s happened I guess I’m just about the best bank robber they ever had. And I sure am happy. — John Dillinger

26. In those days, it didn’t take much imagination to come up with something that required great lyric development skills. You just thought of an experience that you might have gone through, and write it down. — Phil Harris

27. The worst tempered people I have ever met were those who knew that they were wrong. — David Letterman

28. I personally believe that each of us was put here for a purpose — to build not to destroy. If I can make people smile, then I have served my purpose for God. — Red Skelton

29. Education is the mother of leadership. — Wendell Willkie

30. Way down deep, we’re all motivated by the same urges. Cats have the courage to live by them. –Jim Davis

31. By laughing at me, the audience really laughs at themselves, and realizing they have done this gives them sort of a spiritual second wind for going back into the battles of life. –
Emmett Kelly

32. There is no royal flower-strewn path to success. And if there is, I have not found it, for if I have accomplished anything in life it is because I have been willing to work hard. — Madame C.J. Walker

33. Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance. — Kurt Vonnegut

34. No one in the whole world knows all a man’s bignesses and all his littlenesses as his wife does. –Gene Stratton Porter

35. Oh, the moonlight’s fair tonight along the Wabash,
From the fields there comes the breath of newmown hay.
Through the sycamores the candle lights are gleaming,
On the banks of the Wabash, far away. –Paul Dresser

36. When you awaken some morning and hear that somebody or other has been discovered, you can put it down as a fact that he discovered himself years ago – since that time he has been toiling, working, and striving to make himself worthy of general discovery. — James Whitcomb Riley

37. If you enter this world knowing you are loved and you leave this world knowing the same, then everything that happens in between can be dealt with. — Michael Jackson

38. Nobody ever forgets where he buried the hatchet. — Kin Hubbard

39. I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day. –Abraham Lincoln

40. Memories, important yesterdays, were once todays. Treasure and notice today. –Gloria Gaither

41. As a rule, there is no surer way to the dislike of men than to behave well where they have behaved badly — Lew Wallace

42. Semicolon, you dolt! –Jean Shepherd

43. When in doubt, wear red. — Bill Blass

44. Leadership is getting players to believe in you. If you tell a teammate you’re ready to play as tough as you’re able to, you’d better go out there and do it. Players will see right through a phony. And they can tell when you’re not giving it all you’ve got. — Larry Bird

45. I used to get letters from girl reporters saying that their lives were nowhere near as exciting as Brenda’s. I told them that if I made Brenda’s life like theirs, nobody would read it.
– Dale Messick

46. Only the gentle are truly strong. –James Dean

47. Most of the time I played mothers. That’s acting! –Marjorie Main

48. I’m out of the Midwest. It was a good place to come from. It gives you a sense of right or wrong and fairness, which is lacking in our society. –Steve McQueen

49. Unemployment is sky-rocketing; deflation is in our future for the first time since the Great Depression. I don’t care whose fault it is, it’s the truth. — John Mellencamp

50. . . . because a known fact is better than an unknown fact. –Mark Spitz

1.  My two cats follow me all over the house, and lie down to nap only when I sit.  They fight over who gets to nap on the table by my left arm.  The loser naps on my feet.

2.  My BlogHer tiara is beside my laptop.  I might wear it on occasion.

3.  Everyone neat and pretty?  NEAT AND PRETTY!  Today is Tuesday!  You know what that means!  (Every Tuesday I lie in wait for my husband to say “Today is Tuesday” just so I can finish the quote!)  Yes, I was so obsessed with the original Mickey Mouse Club as a child that I would pull my little chair as close to the tv screen as possible and positively quiver with anticipation.  I wore my Mickey Mouse ears, propped my Mouseketeer doll against my feet, and held my Mouseguitar in my lap.  To this day I can still hum the Mouseketeer song backwards, because, being me, that’s how I liked to turn the little handle on the guitar and play the song.

4.  I did the same thing with my Jack-in-the-box – turned the handle backwards and memorized the tune both ways. The “Jack” only annoyed me; he interrupted the melody!

5.  We have a few fragile Christmas ornaments that play music when you turn the tiny handle.  It takes a lot of will power for me NOT to do the backwards melody thing with them.  I have a feeling it would break them, and that’s the only thing that holds me back.  If I thought I could blame the cats, I might do it anyway.

6.  Blog Indiana is in a few days.  I’m really looking foward to it!  There are still a few tickets available; why don’t YOU go, too?  I’ll share my SweeTarts with you!  (What’s a seminar without SweeTarts?)

7.  Does anybody know what happened to Opie’s mother?

8.  I am an unbelievable nitpicker when it comes to continuity in plotlines.   Continuity is important, even in a tv show.  For example, if someone has a sister in one show, that character should not be portrayed as an only child in other segments.  If someone’s wife is named Mildred in several episodes, that same wife should not be referred to as Lorraine later on.  If a man’s  son is a dentist whose wife has a baby girl in one episode,  that same man should not be portrayed as having only a daughter in a later show.  Bonus points if you know which show.

9.    Betty Suarez’s nerdy boyfriend Henry?  That guy who always said “It’s just something I know”?  I thought he was one adorable sexy dude until he got his OTHER girlfriend pregnant.  Then I just thought he was an idiot.

10.  I do love a good book-on-tape in the car!   My husband made fun of my mega-beloved unabridged Jane Eyre book-on-cd until his brain became accustomed to the language and he got hooked on the plotline.  But I’ll never tell.

It’s after 4 a.m. , so G’night, all.

I’m hooked now on writing conferences.  Social media get-togethers have become my crack cocaine.  No longer do I have to cook my meth in my neighbor’s front yard, over an open flame in full view of passing state cops – hey, it IS Indiana, remember, and near the river to boot – for now I can get my high by mingling with and listening to smart people talk about blogging, writing, social media, and all things such as them there.  Not to mention honing my mad grammar skillz which have gone to poop pot in just these past few days of what might euphemistically be called “My Vacation.”

WordCamp got me hooked.  BlogHer made it worse.  Science in the Rockies helped me realize just how important social media connections can be; besides which, it was an absolute BLAST, and the most educational of all educational conferences I’ve ever attended. (Hurry and sign up for 2010!!)    BlogIndiana will give me a much-needed fix. (It’s not too late to sign up!)   And in October,  I’ll be getting my blogging high on in Las Vegas at Blog World Expo, the Big One.

Someone recently asked me WHY I was so keen to go to the Expo. I highly respect this person and have for quite a while, so even though I answered her directly, I’ll answer her here as well, and not merely by saying “please see above.”  Although I guess I just said that.   I will then add that even though the social media thang is a few years old, it’s still pretty much brand-new, and those of us who are addicted are hooked pretty hard.  Around these parts, at least, it’s impossible to find others with whom I can squee and ooooh and exchange points of view about social media and blogging and making all kinds of connections for my clients and doing the business thing with it and using it for things other than the “My babies are so beautiful this morning and I just HAD to tell everybody here” or “I’m having scrambled eggs this morning; what are you having” kind of communication, although such Twitters are interesting and informative to be sure.  There is also so much more to it than having a My Space and selecting the appropriately goth/sparkly/NASCAR/DisneyPrincess/Hogwarts/polka-dotted background and making the dizzying decision as to who will be your TOP FRIENDS this week.

Side note:  If you have a business and have no online presence, you’re losing out on a lot of connection  opportunities.  Get with it, old-timer.  Put down your slide rule, slip that cover over your typewriter, get a phone that isn’t fastened to the wall, replace your Windows 95, and hire somebody who knows how to make your existence known without shelling out tons of money.  Some money, thankyouverymuch, but not tons.  Seriously, you’ll save tons and get megatons back.  Hello, my email is on the sidebar.

Do you like baseball?  Then you’ll LOVE Ultimate Baseball: The Game.  Seriously.

But I digress.

School has already started for many of you. . . . nah, that’s another post in and of itself.  “Never mind.”

Writing conferences.  Come on, meet me there!  You’ll also meet JustHeather, and maybe she’ll take a picture of YOU with a pickle hanging out of your mouth!  If you’re lucky, that is.

Don’t be afraid.  I’m harmless.  I’m nice, really I am, apart from my terrible taste in pie, and. . . no, wait, that’s from Love Actually.

I am nice, though.  Harmless, nice, eager to learn everything I possibly can about social media, business, giving YOUR enterprise an online presence to be valued and envied, blogging, and looking forward to next week for many, many reasons.

One of those reasons is the people.  It would be really awesome if a lot of YOU were there.