Thank you!

I am overwhelmed and touched by your responses! I know I sound like I think I'm hot shit, but I don't really think that. In real life, I am in awe that I was selected and put on the same level as some of the more established blogs in San Antonio. Thank you all for your awesome comments and encouragement, thank you readers new and old for reading, and thanks for being awesome!

Hello new followers and visitors!

Yesterday, Bob Gamber (@bobgambert), put out a call for interesting local blogs. He works at WOAI and was putting together a segment for SA Living, their morning show. Debi Pfitzenmaier (@MomOnMars) recommended my blog and a bunch of other blogs. And I made the cut!

So many of you are here now because you saw the post on WOAI's site, or follow me on Twitter, or found me on Twitter, or are friends of mine on Facebook. If we've never met before, welcome! I do review a lot of food, restaurants and recipes, but I also blog a lot about my life. I think I'm pretty funny, mainly because I won "Most Witty" in high school. But other people have told me so as well.

Facts: I have two dogs, one husband, and countless pairs of earrings. I like pie. A lot. I really don't like it when people don't know the difference between loose and lose. I really wanted to work at Entertainment Weekly, and tried like crazy to get a job there. I went to college at Trinity University. I think my grandparents are awesome. A friend of mine once told me that I have small fingers, like a carny. We are still friends. I made weird faces in photos. I am addicted to lip balm. I hate Kevin Costner, and flaky people. But I love flaky crusts, in a pie. (See how I brought that full circle?)

So that's me. And here you are, reading about me. I hope you like what you've read here. Let me know if there's other things I should be writing about, if you know any cool places I should be going, restaurants I should be eating at, recipes I should be cooking.

Cheers!
Lauren

Writer's Block

I am really having problems writing lately.

Writing for this blog, I mean. Writing for work, no problem. Writing when I have a clear goal and a purpose, where someone gives me the task, no problem. But writing here, when I have to come up with the topic, well, that's gotten hard for me. I don't know if it's because there's a lot of other things going on in my personal and professional life, but this blog has gotten tossed by the wayside.

Not that I have a lack of things to talk about. Things that have happened recently, that I haven't blogged about:

• John left town for a week, during which I realized that I can subsist on cheese and crackers, I can watch bad reality TV for hours, and I suck at living alone
• I had a glass of sangria made with liquid nitrogen
• I had to get a crown, about which I am both angry and ashamed
• I went to the Social Media Breakfast and Business Media PR meeting (BMPR)
• I had a really depressing experience and realized that all things in life have a mourning period

But have I told you any of these things? No. (Well, I have a blog post drafted about the sangria and that whole experience, but I haven't really written it yet, just a few sentences. That blog post isn't going to write itself, missy!)

Why haven't I told you about them? Back in November, during NaBloPoMo, I was craving anything to talk about. I rambled endlessly about my life and its minutiae. Have I lost that? Have I forgotten how to talk to you, readers?

Or am I just tired, and can't seem to find the energy and motivation to sit down and talk to you? Or am I more cautious about what I write? Maybe I only want to write about the restaurants I go to, because I don't want to open myself up too much.

I don't really know the answer to these questions. I just wanted you to know that I haven't forgotten this blog, that I do want to write, I just can't seem to muster up the will to do it.

So instead of talking to you about all of those things, all the things I've been doing and realizing lately, I talk to you about how I can't talk to you.

Look at that. How meta.

Internet Infamy

Awhile ago, John and Kate and Sam and I went to Restaurant Insignia. I'd made reservations and tweeted Chef Jason Dady to ask him what we should get, because I knew he'd changed the menu up. I called and made a reservation. All pretty standard for me.

When we were eating, our waiter, who knew who we were, asked me if I was ohmypuddin. Indeed I am, I said. He told me he'd read my blog and heard about me, presumably from Jason Dady and his staff. I knew from our Arts & Eats experience that some of Dady's chefs know who I am, because they ask Jason Dady "is that ohmypuddin?"

Last year, the sommelier at Il Sogno had read my blog post and remembered me.

While my particular bit of Internet fame is nowhere on par with major blogs and web personalities, it is still interesting. It's kind of weird to be known by your username instead of your actual name. It's weird when people know you by your handle and not your face. When they know things about you because they read your blog, or follow you on Twitter, and yet you've never met them and never spoken to them.

Internet writing is such a bizarre thing, in some ways. I feel like I'm not completely revealing myself on the Internet, but I am putting a lot of information out there. You could get to know me pretty well without meeting me. But I'm writing this here at home, by myself. Writing is such a solitary act that I forget I'm putting it out there for everyone to see. And I'm startled when I find out people are reading it, processing it, remembering it.

I'm not quite sure what my point here is. I guess I'm saying that enough people are reading this and then meeting me in real life for it to become clear to me.

You're out there, reading me, judging me. Better start watching what I say.

Nah, fuck that noise.