Passports with Purpose: A Whole Lotta Llama

There are just about 36 hours left in the Passports with Purpose raffle and wow, are we amazed! We punched through the 6000 dollar mark yesterday. As cofounder Debbie said, “That’s a lot of chicks, ducks, and bees!” I got curious about how many chicks, ducks, or bees, that would be exactly, though I decided …


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Passports with Purpose Update

Wow. Wow, I tellya. Wow. This morning, we sat in Michelle’s (Wandermom) kitchen – me, Beth (Wanderlust and Lipstick), and Debbie (Delicious Baby). Yes, there was coffee, yes there were treats. But mostly, there was amazement at the generosity and overwhelming support we’ve been getting from bloggers and sponsors alike. We have over 25 bloggers …


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Passports with Purpose

On Monday night, I headed back up to my ex-neighborhood to attend Blogsgiving, a Seattle area bloggers’ fundraiser for Northwest Harvest. Prepared to drop in and flee – my usual reaction to a room full of mostly strangers – I ended up staying for a couple of hours while talking about photography, neighborhood blogging, publishing, …


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Vagabond Shoes

I used to have a little blurb on my “about” page that read something like this: Freelance technical writing pays my bills. In between gigs, I submit stories to travel, culture and outdoors publications in hopes that one day, Conde Nast will call. Today was that day. This morning, at about 9am, Conde Nast called. …


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A Travelblogging Community

You’d have to be blogging from underneath a rock (or be blissfully disconnected from blognews) to not know that BlogHer was last weekend. If you’re a regular reader of Nerd’s Eye View, you know that I didn’t go. The first reason I didn’t go was because I felt like the offerings were insufficiently enticing for …


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Travelbloggers at BlogHer

This coming weekend is the BlogHer conference, a huge gathering of women (and yes, some guys) with opinions and Internet connectivity. About a month back – I think it was a month back – I’d finally made up my mind not to attend. There are a bunch of small complicated reasons – my dislike of large crowds, a program that doesn’t resonate with me, too much girly girl stuff on the edges. That’s all my point of view, your mileage/interpretation may vary and all that.

The bigger reasons, the ones that ultimately kept me from booking a flight were simple. The only travel event on the schedule is a 40 minute meet-up. Combine that with a price tag of about 800 dollars. That’s with my contributing editor pass – those who write for the site get to attend the conference for free. A nice perk, truly, given the 300+ fee. I have, without hesitation, ADORED (in all caps) meeting my fellow travelbloggers, but I think you understand that 800 dollars to hang out with you for 40 minutes is a little steep.


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