My outfit is way too cute for this

Several weeks ago, Ben and I attended a conference for web developers, even though I’m not a web developer myself. I'm a web designer, yes, but not a developer. They may sound similar but they’re not, and confusing those two roles would be like asking the hospital janitor [the one mopping your insides off the birthing room floor] whether, or not, your newborn is taking enough areola into her mouth when she latches on. Wrong man for the job, and trust me here people, that was one awkward conversation!

So even though I’m not a web developer, I decided to tag along to the conference anyway. It would get me out of my office and worse case scenario, I’d spend the day navel gazing and drooling into my cleavage, so I'd pretty much be sticking to my normal routine. Plus, Ben thought I might “pick up a thing or two” about coding. However, hours upon hours of instruction on Mollom and Nodes is like sitting in on a calculus lecture in hopes of gleaning a few mathematical tips and tricks.

We left for the conference first thing in the morning since we had to stop and pick-up a day parking pass at the transportation office before heading over to where the conference was to be held. And boy how exciting did this already sound! But Madison is a congested, university town and parking can be hard to come by so I guess the university wanted to run a quick background check and credit report before forking over a parking permit. Luckily, they waived the urine samples.

Once we secured our parking permit, we headed over to the conference in the pharmaceutical building. And who knew, but the pharmaceutical school has its own building. Which I guess makes sense, given that pharmaceutical students need to learn the science of pharmacology and how to scan ten items or less somewhere, right? It’s not like I ever gave it much thought, however, I just assumed pharmacology students were banished to the bowels of the university’s medical school building somewhere between the cadaver coolers and the boiler room.

We checked-in and picked-up our conference schedules and name badges. And for the record, these name badges are quite important and were to be worn at ALL TIMES during the conference. Because as you can image, the general public is just desperate to sneak into a CSS presentation, if only given the opportunity!

Can I just say now that the universe has shown me yet another of life’s arenas whereby I have no business?

So we walk into the commons area, where everyone’s waiting for their respective sessions to begin, and sit down next to a group of four people who Ben assured me were speaking English, however I couldn’t understand the words in the order they were putting them in. Then, every so often, one of them would blurt out something like: CCK, Mollom, module and then the other three, in the group, would pound on their laptops.

I swear to you, the collective brain activity in that room caused a high pitch hissing noise when they started typing. Their brains expanding and pulsating, they'd clutch their foreheads in pain until that particular span of the group, coding orgy was finished. Clearly, I did not have the required quantity of brain matter to be there. Also, my accessories were way too cute. See the ring? OF COURSE YOU CAN.

It’s not like I’m dumb or nothing. My parents aren’t cousins, and my mom didn’t spend extended periods of time sniffing shoe polish when she was pregnant. But listening to all of those developers with their freakishly, large sized heads made me think I’d be better suited for another conference on something I could better grasp, like shoe tying.

Finally, the four bloated heads took a break from their coding and considerately moved onto a subject of more eavesdropping interest: movies.

Geek #1: Have you guys seen Inception? What did you think?

Geek #2: It was a lot like the Matrix, but with nested stories in a linear timeline.

Geek #3: Yeah, definitely the best movie I’ve seen since the Matrix!

Geek #1: I agree, unless you’re talking about Finding Nemo.

Geek #4: Don’t forget Star Trek though!

All geeks in unison: Aw, yeah, Star trek!

Ben, I’ll be waiting in the car.