still basking in the sparkle of british blog camp

bee called it that fizzy feeling and spudballoo wrote about it too, but i think for me, it's more of a sparkly feeling that i feel when i think about blog camp. so the sunlight dancing on the oslo fjord when i took a little walk this evening after work seemed to embody the happiness i was feeling as i reflected on the weekend.

BBC was different than the first blog camp back in june. which isn't really that surprising, of course you can't duplicate your experience and you only ever have one first time. it was different for the obvious reason that it wasn't at my house, so i didn't have all of the worries about levels of tidiness and preparedness that i had the first time around. it was quite delightful to just get on a plane and be picked up at the airport and proceed to enjoy myself. and although i had butterflies as i came out to a waiting bee, it was just for a second and then it passed.

i guess i was just really much, much more relaxed. it helped that i knew B and polly and kristina already and that we just picked up where we left off the last time. it also helped that i got there a day ahead of the others and bonded with bee. the impatience of waiting for spudballoo made us quite antsy for the last half an hour or so, me constantly glancing over polly's shoulder and her jumping up to look out the window whenever bee's husband's game shook the house a bit from above (he's got some good speakers on his computer in his lair). but at last we saw this sight...

not a great picture, i realize, but i didn't take time to change to motion settings and just dashed out to capture the moment.

once spud arrived, it felt like things could really begin. bee had stretched out her lunch preparations (she is a brilliant cook and makes a really mean salad) and the timing was perfect. there was a big rush of words over lunch, as we all felt the intensity of being together and wanting to tell everything and ask everything immediately. looking back, i'm not sure any of us ever really properly took a breath, we were in such a rush to talk to one another.

maybe it's something the blogosphere does to us. we sit in our little lairs wherever they may be (mine's currently in a boring hotel room in oslo), tapping out our words and thoughts in isolation, but actually being quite social people. as bee put it, we're sociable loners, so although we are quite happy with our own company (as long as we've got a macbook and wireless (or maybe that's just me)), once we get together, we feel desperate to catch up on the social side of things. so out tumble the words in a huge flood.

this blog camp, as many of you - desperate for updates - noticed, didn't involve much blogging (or camping for that matter, not that we've ever meant camp in that sense). we tweeted some (those of us with iPhones - which was four out of six), but we didn't blog. and we had the password to the wireless and everything, but we were simply too busy talking. and talking. and talking some more. maybe it was also because we had one less day together than at the first blog camp and so we didn't want to "waste" any of our precious time together staring at our screens.

another of the joys of blog camp is, i have to admit, the prezzies. since i was sick the week before, i didn't get to make a present for everyone this time, but i did bring along some goodies - really special chocolate that i bought at the chocolate research facility (yup, that's the name of a posh chocolate shop) in singapore. the packaging was so beautiful (that's what's in the background of the picture in this post) i didn't need to wrap them, so i tied a little wooden viking ship that i acquired at the viking market the previous weekend around them and gave everyone one of the little scrabble tile necklaces that sabin went into overdrive producing a few weeks ago. i happened to have some little tags that said charming, intelligent, adventurous, humorous and inspiring on them and i stamped the name of the person who best suited those words on the back of each one. can you guess who got which one?

overall, with the second blog camp, i feel an evolution of the concept happening and i'm fascinated to see where it's headed. the first time, there was an element of performance to it and that was totally absent this time. we were all just being. enjoying being together. although we ate great food, drank awesome coffees and had glasses of lovely red wine, all of that was secondary to our just being together. really, truly present in the moments we had. sparkling. illuminated.

please do use the links above and go read what everyone else is saying about their experience. i'm sure that together we are capturing some of the sparkle and fizz that was.