I had delicious chicken curry and kothe (essentially a very yummy fried dumpling) for dinner from Highland Cafe and Bakery (oddly enough, neither appear on their menu online). The suitcase and laundry will be handled. I will teach the cat how to do housework, never fear. He’ll eventually pull his weight. It’s just that right now he’s napping and cannot be disturbed.

Speaking of cats, lolcats specifically, Matt and I drove to Chicago last weekend for Social DevCamp Chicago. After my amazing She’s Geeky experience, both professionally and personally, I had extremely high hopes for the weekend.

In some ways, my expectations were met. The keynotes were amazing – Chris Messina (Google) on pop computing, being a webinist, and the ‘death’ of the web; Andrew Mason (Groupon) on product development and humility; and Ben Huh (Cheezburger Network) on success, agility, and Potato Head Development (interchangeable pieces such that if one things break, no one dies). Several of the other sessions were equally excellent and left me with plenty food for thought and useful takeaways.

What the conference lacked was exactly where She’s Geeky excelled. Social DevCamp was more of a traditional conference complete with the anonymity of being in a large group, minimal personal interaction, and a didactic style. It wasn’t about learning from each other; it was about learning from an “expert.”

The conference certainly didn’t lack in experts and many of the presenters were certainly more than worth the price of admission, but as I learned at She’s Geeky, there’s something special about learning from each other in a group where everyone is on equal footing. It builds confidence, knowledge, and camaraderie in a way that doesn’t happen in a speaker/audience session.

With that said, I am glad I went. The keynotes were intellectually stimulating and inspiring. Chris really made me think about how I learned about the internet and honestly, how I learned to build websites. We are not the only ones who got started with html using View Source. With so many layers, proprietary parts, and other complexities, you just can’t learn that way anymore. The web has been “dumbed down” to be simple and easily accessible, but in doing so, it’s no longer, well, accessible (e.g. view source in Chrome now appears under Developer Tools instead of under View). It’s a tricky balance. It used to be that not everyone even had access to the web, but now, nearly everyone can be on the web, but could they learn how to build their own site, understand how the web works, and really become part of the group building new, important content if their access is solely through couch computing – apps, iPads, Kindles, etc?

Chris is passionate about keeping the web open to everyone and, somewhat jokingly, calls himself as a ‘webinist’ – a web activist. I like it. I think he should start a movement.

Andrew was funny, humble, and smart. He talked about not sitting on your laurels and really building for and talking to your users, not just marketers or developers. Perhaps most poignantly, he talked about how small victories have a much greater impact on team happiness than one big win – lots of small releases vs. one really big one.

Ben was brilliant and absolutely hilarious. His lolcat and Fail-peppered talk was smart and funny. Rather than just grinning at funny kittys, graphs, and human stupidity, it made me look at their network of sites as a viable, profitable, smart business venture. The business model and execution are just plain impressive – less than $2,000 and 2 hours to put up an entirely new site. Eighty percent of the sites they put up are profitable.

All in all, the weekend was good and definitely an enjoyable learning experience. The drive to and from Chicago was long – particularly since the drive home extended itself by nearly 3 hours thanks to Chicago traffic. Would I do it again? Yes, but I’d also take off the following Monday.

And now, I’m going to go have a few bites of the delicious chocolate cake that made its way home with me. Either that or I’ll save it to eat with my tasty leftovers tomorrow for lunch. I haven’t decided yet.

p.s. If you’re interested, several of the slide decks from Social DevCamp Chicago are available here on SlideShare.

So, in honor of the new spice rack, I started thinking (inspired further, of course, by GraphJam):

If my life depended on identifying spices I own by taste, I’d die. I can identify some by smell (maybe). I couldn’t describe them to you or actually tell you what they do or rather, are supposed to do to food, “Salt good. Too much pepper bad. Garlic good. Too much salt bad.”

Some spices I started using because I stumbled on them in a recipe who knows when for who knows what. Other spices, I use out of habit, such as always putting oregano, parsley, basil, and garlic in spaghetti sauce. I learned it that way and it works. I’ve never questioned it.

Some spices in my cupboard are a mystery. Turmeric. What’s it do? It turns things yellow. What’s it taste like? It turns things yellow. It goes in curries. Curries are often yellow.

Yes, I’m acknowledging my ignorance. The sad thing is I really do like to cook and I like to imagine that I know what I’m doing sometimes. I think I’ll spend some time with my cookbooks and hold off on the trips to Penzey’s for six different kinds of pepper until I get my bearings.

Save the Dates are mostly done and mailed. I have 26 addresses that we’re still missing. Before doing them, I’d forgotten how much work calligraphy is. I remember now. Handwriting all of the addresses took rather a long time. It’s why I ended up doing them in bursts. Matt’s going to run the last of them to the post office on Monday. Hopefully, we can get the rest of the addresses this weekend – or at least most of them anyway.

So back to the subject of the new apartment, I did mention it felt huge, yes? We’re on the top floor (the 4th) and the ceilings are extremely tall. In comparison, my last apartment was a hobbit hole. This just feels immense, in a welcome way. My television and entertainment center, however, look rather dwarfish. They were purchased for a teeny apartment. It’s a problem for another day, but I’m on the lookout for ready, cheap solutions furnishings-wise. We’ll figure something out. In the meantime, I’ll cheat by finding an extremely tall fake plant to put on top of it or something (not really). The cat, who is adapting quite nicely, would eat the plant. I’m sure of it.

Last, but not least, we had our engagement pictures taken on our speed trip to Colorado last weekend. She’s already finished with them – all 182. The session was a blast – Tattered Cover bookstore right across from Union Station. We used both locations and the pictures are great. Denver’s LoDo lent itself nicely and Ashley Davis, our photographer, is fabulous. We enjoyed ourselves and you can tell in the photos. I’m laughing in nearly all of them. Now, we have to pick out a handful for our various needs. It was a good experience and I’m quite glad we chose her for our wedding. I can’t wait.

I spent the last weekend in a lot of pain and did a fair amount of sleeping. Needless to say, the Save the Dates didn’t go out. I’m going to get them done and out this weekend. I did manage to go try on my dress and pick a bridesmaid dress that all the bridesmaids actually like. I consider that a major accomplishment.

On the downside of things, my rings came back from the shop and we tried to pick them up last night. While the wedding band looked good, my engagement ring was flattened on one side and very thin where the split had been. Dixie, who helped us last night and every other time we’ve been in, was just as bothered as I was and made arrangements for the ring to be fixed at another shop. She commented that she would be talking to the Kay Jewelers District Manager and the District Repair Manager. I hope she does. It’s sad that we’ve had these problems and it really shouldn’t have happened. If it weren’t for her being genuinely helpful and concerned, I’m sure I’d be pretty irritated at this point. Good customer service carries a lot of weight.

So, all told, things are good despite my back and carrying a large bottle of Tylenol everywhere I go. I’ll feel better when the Save the Dates and the move are done this weekend. I think I’ll take an afternoon off later this month just to recuperate from the craziness and enjoy our additional 300 square feet.