1. everyone should watch house of cosbys. andy was shocked when i told him i still hadn’t seen it. shocked! jaime was surprised too, and set me up with his laptop and headphones right there in the convention center so i could watch it immediately. it’s hilarious! i never download or watch any videos online, probably because i had dialup for so long that i’m still stuck in the “videos will take for fucking ever” mentality. but house of cosbys was totally worth it, if only for cosby team triosby.
p.s. if you are my mom or dad, you should not watch house of cosbys.
2. this year kevin had a silent auction to raise money for 20×2. he picked six people, each of whom made a shirt based on one of the previous questions. the one i made was based on “what is interactive?” and you can see it here. i added some velcro to the front of a black shirt, and made a bunch of magnetic poetry-type words with velcro on the backs so that they would stick to the shirt. essentially it was a magnetic poetry shirt, with a little handmade cosmetics bag to store the extra words. the guy who won my shirt at the auction (as a gift for his girlfriend) asked me for a swear-word expansion pack. why didn’t i make any swear words in the first place? you’d think i would have.
3. everyone (even my mom and dad) should play apples to apples.
4. during the conference i was interviewed by a lovely woman named andrea and her husband christopher. they were filming interviews with bloggers for andrea’s masters thesis. andrea had a series of questions to ask me, which she said i could answer as briefly or elaborately as i liked. i’ve never been interviewed on film before, so i was a bit nervous at first. but then my penchant for long-windedness and bizarre jokes took over, and the whole thing ended up taking at least an hour. you can see pictures of it here and here. i had fun!
afterward andrea and her husband said that i was articulate and well-spoken. which of course made me launch into a ridiculous story about an ex-boyfriend who hated that i spoke in complete sentences during arguments. but it also made me more confident about my public-speaking abilities. my relative successes in the interview and on the panel are leading me to believe that i might not be as terrible at it as i’d always thought.
5. not about sxsw: i’ve had this keyboard for over six years and i’ve never really cleaned it. theoretically, it could contain the dead skin cells of four of my ex-boyfriends.
6. every year i’m delighted to spend time with this creative, funny, interesting, talented group of people. that these people seem to enjoy spending time with me is what pushes me to be more productive and try to accomplish new things. these wonderful people must like me for a reason, right? maybe i can do things, too.
i’ve been feeling sorry for myself for a long time now, and i think this year’s sxsw has helped me to realize that i’m capable of doing some of the things i’ve been meaning to. to wit: if my new plan works the way i want it to, i’ll be seeing many of my sxsw friends before the end of the year. keep your fingers crossed.