...another Webloggers Meetup. It was a good meet, complete with live music by The Hothouse Flowers. Anita didn't particularly want live music from The Hothouse Flowers or anyone else, but hey, that's the drawback/blessing of public spaces. It could always be worse. I could start singing.

The turnout was sparse: Anita Rowland, Eric Haddock, Eric's wife (I know her name, I just don't know if I should state it publicly), a writer and a photographer from a local paper (whose names I didn't catch since I was the last to arrive), and me. (The writer took notes and threatened to read all of our blogs, so I'll have to watch my grammer... oh, nertz! Did I end the last sentence with "me"? I! I meant to say, I. Honest.) If I understand the tale correctly, Anita had contacted a Redmond paper to publicize the meetup in their community events calendar. Since the meetup was at Crossroads Mall in Bellevue, they snobbishly did not run the blurb and passed it on to the Bellevue paper, where our new journalistic friends jumped on the chance to interview some fascinating and witty Eastside bloggers. The asked me some questions, too.

The discussion, predictably, was focused on the nature of blogging. I learned that it was considered gauche not to provide links to things you discussed. (Hence the relative preponderence of links in this post. Tomorrow, I'll get lazy again and make you google things.) After our journalists left, the conversation drifted over to the hidden "treasures" in the area--those nice places that don't spend a gazillion bucks on advertizing and so are often unknown to many people. There was also some discussion about job searches and the like. About that time, I realized that I had overstayed the hour I had intended to spend and so excused myself and headed back to work. I'm tempted to think that I'm starting to prefer the smaller gatherings. There are less new people to meet, but the discussions seem deeper--or maybe it's just slower. I don't know. Either way, it's still fun.