“Hey, beautiful!” I heard a man yell. I kept walking towards downtown. “What’s going on?” I slowed down and looked towards the voice yelling these words and saw a 20-something, man dressed in street clothes crossing the street, arms open, looking at me. It then occurred to me that, oh my, he was talking to me.

This left me greatly confused.

I gave the man a befuddled look, as though he’d just asked me where the library was in Portuguese. I kept waiting for him to follow up with, “Can you spare some change?” but he didn’t, so I kept walking in the other direction. As I continued down the sidewalk, I came upon another man who looked at me and said, “Hey, how you doing today?” Dear Lord, why were people being so friendly on the street? What was this, the deep south? Here in the Midwestern states we typically ignore our fellow pedestrians and let them live out their hollow lives in peace, thank you very much.

I still don’t know why I suddenly attracted the attention of two men while walking down the street in the middle of July. I felt like the revolving door of my office building had spun me out into an alternate dimension where I was suddenly an irresistible sex object. I looked down at my outfit and saw that I was wearing the most generic clothing possible, as if I were auditioning to be a extra in a crowd scene of a movie – jeans, t-shirt, and a purse. I wasn’t even wearing foxy sunglasses.

My only hypothesis about these events has to do with the fact that I work with a bunch of guys. Typically when I’m walking around downtown, I am traveling with a pack of men, with perhaps one other woman, to get Starbucks or chow on Indian food. They are obviously scaring off the hoards of available men in the vicinity who want to throw themselves at my hotness. My co-workers are holding me back. So, if I want to score with random men on the streets, I will have to walk to get my coffee alone.

In this instance, however, I was walking to Borders to buy a map of San Francisco because it occurred to me that, “Oh hey, I am traveling there in, like, two days, and maybe I should not get lost.” Or if I do get lost I should have a map handy to wave around to better alert potential muggers that I am an easy pickins’ tourist.

All of this is a roundabout way to remind you that I will be at the BlogHer conference at the Westin St. Francis this July 18th-20th in San Francisco. Registration is closed, but if you are attending, my panel is on Saturday, July 19th and 3:15pm and is called “What We Do: Blog to Book Redux.” I’ll be speaking along with Ellen Gerstein from Wiley & Sons, literary agent Neeti Madan from Sterling Lord, and fellow blog-to-book author Rita Arens. You can also stop by the BlogHer bookstore right after the panel from 4:30pm-5:15pm where I’ll be signing books. You can buy a copy there or bring your own. (I won’t tell nobody.)

Last night tell I could tell I was stressed out about travelling because I ate all five of the tasty and delicious, strawberry yogurt protein bars I had intended to stuff in my suitcase as travel food. Obviously, the Topamax has worn off. My appetite has returned. And while stress eating is bad, it’s nice to feel like myself again and not zombie girl. I am particularly stressed about this trip because I have never travelled this far before. I’ve never been to California. I’ve never seen the Pacific Ocean. I’ve never been on a four and a half hour flight. That leaves me a lot of flight time to freak out.

I worry that I will forget to pack something essential – like my pills, cell phone charger, my sunglasses – and my whole trip will be a disaster (because it’s not like they sell sunglasses in California). I worry that I will forget to bring something obvious, like my flight confirmation number, and I will miss my plane. I worry that I will be sitting in the terminal waiting for my flight, but I won’t hear it called because my headphones are on. I worry that the plane will be delayed and I will get there so late that the trains will stop running and I’ll have to find a taxi and it will cost five bazillion dollars and the driver will only accept Euros. I wonder why I chose to fly into a strange city at 11:00pm their time, 2:00am my time (because it was cheaper). I wonder if I’ve packed too much and my suitcase is too heavy to practically tote around the city. I wonder if I haven’t packed enough and I will be too cold or inappropriately dressed for the various events. These and a million other hypothetical scenarios are why I’ve also eaten three fudge pops.

However, I’m all packed now, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t forget to pack my brain. On the bright side, I don’t feel the need to write out a will in case my plane crashes like I did five years ago when I was petrified of air flight. That’s growth, right? Once I’m there I think I’ll have a good time, because I had lots of fun at BlogHer last year and I don’t remember what anyone was wearing.

If you see me, please say hi. There are going to be about 1000 people there and a lot of weird mojo can happen involving status, popularity, cliques and all that crap when you get that many people together. However, we are all just people, and I think most of us are friendly and want to make new friends, so please say hi if you see me. I am just a person too. A totally, hot, sexpot of a person.