Meryl's Notes Blog

One of the highlights was Fray Cafe2. Derek did a fab job bringing the world of Fray offline. I teared, shocked, amazed, laughed, and smiled at many of the stories. Fray was at a great coffee shop called the Hideout. Alas, it was not big enough and those coming from the awards had to be turned away or wait in line until people left (people were coming and going throughout most of the night).

Jason Levine told an amazing story of when he was an intern doing a home visit to check a woman who had a C-section and ended up saving her baby’s life.

Heather, who was in the process of moving to San Francisco, got off to a bad start when attacked with E. coli and Derek gave her the best birthday present ever.

Carrie’s moving story of a childhood friend and overcoming a grudge is online for reading. Surprisingly, I preferred hearing the story than reading it, when it’s usually the other way around because I miss bits of pieces. She spoke clearly and I understood almost every word.

Josh told an incredible story of how he entered and exited the world of having all the drugs he could ever want for dressing up in drag.

Jay is embarking on a long trip to Europe and you can read the moving story he told.

I enjoyed hearing stories from Jish, Jeffrey, Mark, Brad, Justin, and James. Plus, two remarkable ladies who have more stories than many of us having lived through the ’50s. I told a story that took place in LA in 1984 right before the summer olympics.

Also creative was 20X2 and there was an article on it in the Austin Chronicle. One question, “What is real?” 20 people each had two minutes to answer it. Heather posted hers.

Between these two events, I managed to meet Carole (who saved me by offering a banana), Pableaux, Matt, Min Jung, Pamela, Jeremy, Rusty, Nikolai, Geoff, Leonard, Lauren, Jane, Ernie, http://www.centrs.com/ Denise, David-Michel, sooz, Erica, Matt, Leia, Jessica, Billy, Cheri, Bryan, Molly, and Amit. I sincerely hope I didn’t forget someone that I talked to for more than just an intro, but my memory is not as sharp as Jish’s. Please write me at meryl at meryl dot net and refreshen the memory. Everyone counts in my book.

The whole trip is a blur as I was a zombie trying to make it to everything. It takes a lot of energy for me to hear all that is going on in the panels, speakers, and night events. It all caught up with me, unfortunately, on the last night. I should’ve taken a nap instead of going from a panel straight to the night’s events. But, I wanted to continue hanging with people.

I can be proud that I hung in there as much as I did. It’s far more than I’ve ever done at any other conference. I stayed up later than usual. I talked to more people than usual. It was hard, but it felt good to push myself beyond the limits. Just wish I didn’t have to miss out on the Omni on the last night.