wake up!

A week ago today, before I realized how sick I was getting, I made it down to downtown Oakland for (second?) Oakland bloggers' (and auxiliary) luncheon at the Pacific Coast Brewery, aka Ladies (& Gents) Who Lunch (or: A much-needed excuse to leave the house).

What a great gang of folks, some familiar to me from their web presences, other delightful to meet for the first time in any medium!

I will steal Gwen's HTML to deliver some hyperlinked shout-outs:

George, Bob, Adrienne, Robyn, Jhames, Gareth, Lisa, Ben, Min Jung, co-Nonchalance-ateer Melissa, Lara from Oaklog, Starmama, Jessica, Joe (archive), his site-less (!) friend Joe, and a too-brief appearance by [her] luscious boy.

It was nice connecting with Adrienne, who was once my contracts contact at one of my publishers and who came bearing a copy of ZZ Packer's short story collection, which she will be reviewing for Salon.

It was a great time. What awesome people orbiting this cool little city. Supposedly, the next event will be a happy hour, and I hope I have my drinking legs back by then (a week from now?).

I snapped some pictures and, as I occasionally do, accidentally shot a snippet of movie footage as well, which I've thrown together into a quick-and-dirty photo album with Dreamweaver.