10 Things I Learned From Roommates

After spending some time in the blog conference circuits I’ve been lucky enough to room with fun friends that I’ve met online. I’m always amazed at the fact, that even though I email, tweet, and sometimes call these women on a regular basis, there is always a plethora of new things I discover after rooming with them.

What have I learned from roommates?

Well I’m glad you asked.

1. Not everyone enjoys waking up to jazz music blasting from my programmed phone alarm clock as much as I do.

2. People sleep weird…as in falling asleep mid conversation at 8pm weird. Who does that?

3. Nobody irons. I got rocked two separate times by two different roommates for busting out the ironing board and when one current roommate met the previous roommate, the current roommate was all, “did you know Kat irons!!” and the old roommate was all “YES!!!” and they both cackled and fell to the ground in a fit of laughter.

4. People are wrinkled. They may think ironing is a laughing matter, but I’ll have you all know I was sharper looking than both of them that day.

5. I apparently pronounce the word “bag” incorrectly. Every time I find myself around Scary Mommy and I happen to mention my lost ‘baggage’ or that I need to ‘grab my bag’ or that I’m excited about the ‘swag bags’…she gives me the most disgusted triple take you ever did see. Because I say the word bag the same way I say the word beg. What I’ve found is that the rest of civilization pronounces it with a hard a. Like pAck. Without the ck.

6. East coasters are repetitive. It’s like they catch themselves making a great point and they just have to DRILL it in. A west coaster might say, “He broke my heart!” and we’d talk about our feelings and just be done with it. But an East coaster says, “I mean he BROKE my heart! Broken! We were talking and it was whole and the next minute…broken. Just like that! Broke. My. Heart. My heart is broken.” And suddenly Jerry Seinfeld makes SO much sense.

7. I’m tall. Extremely tall. To give you an idea of how tall I am, here I am as seen in a picture with Roo from Nice Girl Notes. You might remember the interview I had with her baby. Roo is actually seven feet tall and as you can see I’m much taller than even her.

8. I’m pretty much the only person in the world who doesn’t watch True Blood or Vampire Diaries.

9. Sometimes the best advice comes from a tired roommate who quietly says things like, “I hope you always stay likable and funny and don’t get sucked into the negativity and drama in blog land”.

10. People are smart. Super smart. In fact, in just one conversation with Laurie Turk from Tip Junkie I learned that I go about getting help in all the wrong ways. We needed a hand transporting bags (yes begs.) and after one hotel worker claimed to not know what to do for us Laurie turned to us and was all, “okay rule #1 you never give a person an opportunity to tell you no, and rule #2 you always approach the person authorized to give you a yes.” This is in direct conflict with my typical “Ummm…hi, do you think you can maybe possibly give me a hand unless you’re busy, I mean you don’t HAVE to…why don’t you just go and forget I mentioned it! Bye!” fashion of approaching people for help.

Next stop? Vegas.