**Updated to add: Lorrie posted about the time we met and included a photo, which I immediately stole and added to my blog for proof of having actually met her.**

This is post #4 in a five-part series about how awkward I was at BlogHer ’10 in New York last week. Here are the first and second and third installments if you’re interested.

Join me, if you will, on a full (two) days of reminiscing how horribly awkward I felt (and really was) at the blogging conference everyone’s been talking about. Every few hours I’ll post another humiliating experience so I can relive my shame in the hopes of getting it out of my system.

I have a whole year to fine-tune my cool.

Yet somehow I don’t think it’ll be long enough.

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Awkward of All Awkwards #2

Amazingly enough, I made it through the first morning of the conference (Friday) without committing any major social faux pas.

Don’t worry, though, there’s always lunchtime to make me look like a total idiot.

Chelsie and I (by the way, are you getting the idea that Chelsie was a totally awesome wingman on my trip to BlogHer?) loaded up our plates at lunch on Friday afternoon and bee-lined it straight to the first empty table we saw so we could begin stuffing our faces without incident.

It’s not that we were trying to be antisocial…it’s just that we, being BlogHer virgins, had not yet mastered the fine art of plopping down at a pre-claimed table and making friends with strangers over ham sandwiches and pasta salad. So we claimed an empty table to avoid any difficulty (I try to avoid difficult situations if at all possible, it’s my motto).

LUCKILY (yes, I do mean luckily) not all women at BlogHer were as silly as me and Chelsie. Some of them actually wanted to socialise and network and who knows, maybe just meet some new friends. Before we knew it, we’d welcomed a couple new ladies to our table and were having a lovely time chatting with them.

One girl in particular was really nice. I told her I liked her shirt (it was this cute bohemian look, and we all know how I’m currently in the process of trying to channel my own inner bohéme). She said thanks. I asked her how she was liking the conference so far. She said she was enjoying it.

A moment later, Chelsie excused herself to go get more ice for her Diet Pepsi.

(This should be a warning to you: bad things happen to me, socially, when my wingpeople leave my pathetic side.)

Without Chelsie there to make me not an idiot, I turned to the girl I’d been chatting with and just…peered at her. She looked so familiar. She looked a lot, in fact, like the genius behind the blog called Token Fat Girl. Only her hair was different than the picture on said blog, and I couldn’t be sure it was her.

So I asked.

Me: Are you Token Fat Girl?

She: Uhhh…no.

Me: Oh. Oops. Sorry. I didn’t mean…uh, I didn’t mean to imply…umm…oy.

OKAY, BACK UP, I DID NOT DO THAT.

Thankfully I have SOME (not much, but some) sense of decorum, and I did realise that you can’t just go around a blogging conference asking women if they’re the Token Fat Girl. It’s just not very nice, you know?

Instead, I asked my new friend what her name was—Lorrie, she said—and this, being the name of the Token Fat Girl (whose blog, by the way, I love and have been following for at least a year), still didn’t give me enough courage to ask if she was the Token Fat Girl. Instead, I just asked her what her blog was.

TOKEN FAT GIRL, lo and behold! (And now we’re getting to the awkward part, because you’d better believe that if I avoid awkwardness at the beginning of a conversation, I more than make up for it by the end.)

OH MY GOSH YOU’RE TOKEN FAT GIRL! I squealed. YOU’RE FAMOUS! (Seriously, what is with me and famous people? Desperate much?) OHMYGOSH I LOVE YOU AND I AM A HUGE FAN OF YOUR BLOG AND I READ IT ALLTHETIME, HOORAY! It’s like, I see someone in real life who is famous online and all of a sudden I have no filter anymore. Guh.

In my defense, this was the first famous blogger I had met who I didn’t run away from and who I’d been following for longer than a month, so I really didn’t know quite how to react.

Obviously.

Poor Lorrie smiled and thanked me, but I noticed she sort of…inched her plate a little further away from my side of the table.

Not that I blame her, I’d’ve done the same thing if I’d been accosted by a psychohosbeast blogger with spinach in her teeth and a hidden social-climbing agenda.

When we were wrapping up our meal, Lorrie asked to grab a picture with me, most likely so she could take it home and show all her friends how nuts this one girl at BlogHer was, but it didn’t matter—fame-whore that I am, I was delighted to hop in a photo with my favourite weight-loss blogger. I got one with my camera, too, but it was dark and blurry and you’d never believe it was even humans, let alone me and Lorrie (me and Lorrie I say, like it’s the most natural thing in the world for me and Lorrie to be hangin’ out) at lunch.

If she ever does upload the photos, you’ll hear about it from me.

But was there ever any doubt of that?

Poor Lorrie. Poor me. Maybe someday I’ll learn how to be cool and sophisticated in the presence of awesomeness so much greater than my own.

Yeah right.

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Here are the rest of the posts in this series:

Part the First

Part the Second

Part the Third

Part the Fifth

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