Friday I had the distinct pleasure of meeting and lunching with a few of my fellow Pittsburgh-area bloggers, the techno-superwomen of Inner Bitch and the knitting goddess of Creating Text(iles).
We ate on the South Side, which is another rare treat for me — it’s not so much harder to get to than any other part of Pittsburgh, but I manage to detour myself every time I trek there, and the parking is nasty. Harvard Square on the first Friday night of the fall term nasty. Haight Street on a sunny Saturday morning nasty. At least, I think of it that way. On Friday I barely got lost at all, and I found a parking spot just around the corner from the restaurant.
The conversation was lively and entertaining, with just a pleasant smattering of geekiness. (Christina came through with a sentence so dense with acronyms and high-tech terminology that I’m still trying to parse it.) The food also was extremely good.
I brought everyone Inkburns bookmarks (the new design, with the photo of a bullet going through chalk) and Fat Plum coasters, and they were flatteringly appreciative.
My only regret was that the knitting goddess did not wear any of her knit items. She promised to wear Golden Gate (I think that was the name) next time, so I have latched my hopes on that future event. We’ve planned to get together in November.
And so of course this has led me to start thinking again of a centralized list of Pittsburgh bloggers. Each blog seems to maintain its own list: the advantage is that one can include and not include sites according to taste. The disadvantage is that we lack a directory. I’d like to have a map of the area with dots for each blog (like the NYC bloggers have), and then a searchable directory that would allow one to find all local blogs with a literary bent, for example. The categorizing/indexing would be tricky, but it’s doable I think. I tried to coax Christina into setting it up, and she did waver for a moment, but she’s simply too involved already with other volunteer efforts. I don’t have much time myself, and I suspect my programming skills wouldn’t be up to the challenge. But if I have a lull in workload I think I might take the project on.
(If anyone wants to work on it with me, that would be keen. And quicker I’m sure. Drop me a note.)