I headed down to San Diego a couple of weekends ago (er, actually it was the beginning of August) for the BlogHer ’11 Conference.  It sounded like a fun event, plus it meant I could see two of my best friends, Noreen & Ayesha, who live in San Diego.  That’s Noreen’s dog Roxie above… she wanted to come along on the ride to pick me up from the airport.  I think she looks like a little fox.

After settling in at Noreen’s apartment, we headed out for some Mexican food at one of Noreen’s favorite spots, La Puerta.  I love that you can walk most places in San Diego, at least if you’re staying downtown!  We started with their guacamole and chips.

I’m on a street taco craze, so I ordered tres tacos…

dos carnitas, y uno pollo asado

¡muy delicioso!

The next day I woke up bright and early to head over to the conference.  I’ve only been to one blogging conference before this, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect.  I think what surprised me the most was how many people there were attending… over 4000 people!

After checking out the newbie breakfast and participating in a ‘speed dating’ blogger-get-to-know-each-other exercise I was ready to hit up some of the sessions.  First up…  Essential Writing & Editing Skills.  Eh.  It wasn’t anything special and really I didn’t get a whole lot out of it.  It seemed like the speakers weren’t really interested in much else besides talking about themselves.  This seems to be a recurring trend with bloggers –  quite the egotistical bunch.  Luckily for me, the next session was much better with some great speakers who were very down to earth… Essential Blog Content Development.  I now have lots of new ideas and hopefully will catch up on my old posts soon so I can actually start implementing some of them soon.  Bear with me!

Oh and be sure to take a look at Angela’s blog, Crafting, Cooking & Cocktails – Confessions of a Domestic Goddess Wannabe.  I met her during the speed dating fun-ness, and her blog is so cute.  Plus she has amazing dresses she finds at second-hand stores.  I wish I were that adventurous!

That night we headed over to Noreen & Ayesha’s parent’s house for their little cousin’s birthday party… their mum and aunts cooked up some of the best pakistani food ever, plus we had chocolate chip ice cream birthday cake for dessert.  That’s pakora with a yummy chutney pictured above.

I seriously want to come over for cooking lessons… I love spicy food and this was so delicious… Haleem & Biryani, sprinkled with fresh onions and tomatoes, served with a side of naan bread and another spoonful of the herby chutney.

On Saturday after a quick breakfast with Ayesha, Noreen and the adorable Zara I headed back to the conference for a couple more writing sessions.  I also took a look around the Conference Expo hall and made out like a bandit with loads of cool freebies from all the corporate sponsors.  That’s my new Post-it pen above. It’s a highlighter, pen, and flag dispenser all in one… like the 007 of pens.  The friendly Post-it folks also gave me environmentally friendly tape and sponges. They were my favorite sponsor.  Probably because I’ve been a stationary fanatic since I can remember and the thing I looked forward to most about going back to school was buying new school supplies.  Yup, I’m a nerd.

Giuliana was at the Conference too… she’s very skinny.

A bit skelator-like actually.

But she seemed friendly and fun, so that’s cool.

I also picked up some hot pink sunglasses, perfect for a Noreen’s surprise 80′s themed birthday the following weekend.  Don’t worry, I didn’t just spill the beans… the party has happened already, and omg she was SO surprised.  I’m so impressed we were all able to keep the secret!  Stay tuned for a party recap, coming soon…

On Saturday night I finally was able to try out Noreen’s favorite restaurant in life, Basic.  Random… but if you look at the picture above, do you see a little blob that’s to the left of the bubbles?  The one that look a little like a fox?  With sticky-up ears?  Maybe a bit like Roxie?!  Well, Noreen and I think she has a ghost.  Before you think I’ve gone completely mad, there were other things that happened while I was there… like on the first night a book flew of the bookshelf and literally landed about 5 feet away from the bookshelf when we were both sitting there and talking.  No windows were open, nothing could have shaken the bookshelf.  V. strange.  And then another night we tried to put at least three different DVDs into her dvd player and none of them would work, but then when we put Sex and the City in it worked perfectly.  Spooky, yes?  The little Roxie lookalike blob didn’t have any explanation… no mark on the bar, no water spot, no smudge on my camera phone.  But yet it’s there.

Yup, definitely a ghost.

Who happens to like Sex and the City.

Back to Basic though… I can see why Noreen loves this spot.  First of all the space is unbelievably cool.  It’s like an old warehouse with exposed brick walls, wooden beams and huge industrial sized fans on the ceiling.

And the pizza is really really good, with a super thin crust that they bake in a brick oven.

They serve the pizza on battered baking sheets… it adds to the ‘basic’ (ha ha) feel of the whole place.  I love that they don’t try too hard and they let their food speak for itself.  Luckily for me I was going to get to come back to Basic the following weekend for Noreen’s birthday… we both agree that pizza is one of those meals that you’ll never get bored eating.  Oh, and just to clarify on birthday activities… Noreen knew D & I were coming down for her actual birthday, she just had no idea about the surprise party the next night!