Miserable Monday

Brrrr! It is so cold here right now. My fingers are turning blue, so forgive me if there are a lot of typos today, but I can't feel the keys properly.



Mondays usually suck, but freezing cold Mondays suck even more. At least most of the weekend was good, especially yesterday, which was the first bloggirls meeting. Unfortunately, I couldn't stay for the whole event :( But it was awesome to meet the lovely ladies I read every day and find a new restaurant nearby that totally rocks. Here's a rundown of who was there and what I thought. Hehehe...



phillygirl: The genius behind bloggirls and the organiser of the event, she was the only one in the restaurant when I arrived and nervously asked, 'Are you a bloggirl?' Friendly, really easy to talk to and seems really well connected in the blogging world, she's also really jacked up with the technical side of stuff, which makes me jealous. Read her blog. It has adorable pics of her bunnies on it as well as good reading.



The Jackson files: This mom blogs about her gorgeous little boy, Jackson. I'd read her blog a couple of times, but not being a parent wasn't really a regular. Having met the little tike, though, I think I'm going to be stopping by there more regularly - he is just too sweet. So is The Mom, with a charming English accent and loads of patience.



MzMozi: I hadn't read this lady guy's blog before, but I was missing out! She is so funny. Apparently she's been sparse lately, but I'd recommend checking out her blog anyway. She seems to know lots about everything, like who Blonde Blogshell really is.



Sleepyjane: This fabulous person is Afrikaans, but writes such good posts in English that I would never have guessed. The closest to my age (I think), poor Sleepyjane got lost coming to the event. I'm very glad she made it there though - such a sweetie. Oddly enough, most of her readers seem to be from the USA. Bizarre.



Sweets: I read Sweets' blog pretty much everyday. She's funny, crazy, quick and... well, sweet. And she is so beautiful in real life. Her web pics do not do her justice. She and Angel (see next) met in November last year, so they swanned in there together and didn't have to deal with the jitters the rest of us had.



Angel: I also read Angel regularly, for the same reasons I read Sweets. And she didn't disappoint, arriving with camera in hand, in true Angel style. I had to leave before everyone's food arrived (I missed out on some really interesting stuff, like Duck and Cherry Pie... Yum), so I didn't get to see if she took pics of the food. Really awesome to hear the story of how she met Glug, the love of her life and a fellow blogger.



So, in conclusion, bloggirls is a great idea. The next one is already scheduled for June, and phillygirl has plans to start similar events in Cape Town and Durban, so if you're a girl blogger in any of those towns, you need to get your bum in motion and sign up. And if you're not... well, start your own network - it's such a cool way of getting to know people (and finding new blogs to lurk around).



A pic for Monday...

First post of December

It's the third of December, which means that my holiday is only 11 days away! I can hardly wait. I've finished the December deadlines, and now I'm spending my days trying to convince uncooperative people to grant me interviews for my January stories before we close on 14 Dec. But, being uncooperative people, they are not cooperating in the slightest. Strange, that.

I have realised something about the general South African and blogs: most of them don't have one and few even enjoy reading other people's blogs. So imagine my excitement when I discovered that some of the poor people on my monthly communal email list have actually been following my blog!

This could of course be because I tell them to in every email I send, but seeing nobody usually follows my advice I doubt it. I'm left to assume then, that they either really like this blog or they have way too much time on their hands. It's probably the latter, being December, and my comments and number of visitors will almost certainly drop drastically come the new year, but for posterity's sake I am going to enjoy deluding myself that their reason is in actual fact the former. It's better for self-esteem, self-acceptance and all those psychological good things that motivational speakers always talk about.

Nationwide could do with some of those now. The airline has had its entire fleet grounded and is facing suspension. Don't get me wrong - I'm all for suspending unsafe airplanes, but I feel sorry for a) the 6 000 passengers that were stranded without an option of catching another flight and b) the Nationwide staff that have nothing to do with maintenance, but who are still being clobbered along with the rest.

So sympathy to Nationwide employees, and rude words to SAA.