There's a down side to weight loss. Boob loss. Look, I am not ashamed to declare I love my own boobs, they're the best! They're the only thing I've ever gotten for free that other people have had to pay for. Unfortunately, once my weight dips below 145, my full bosom starts to more closely resemble cow utters than the sexy-fun-time-appendages I enjoy so much. When I started shooting The Daily Special I weighed around 168. Now, after training for a stair climb, doing the SELF Challenge, and losing some old relationship weight I weigh about 136. 

I should be doing cartwheels in the street, right? I mean that's a good 30 pounds lost mainly by living my life, yet my deflating boobage causes me some extreme sadness. I mean, I pay a lot for bras. When the nice woman at Victoria's Secret told me that I was a B-cup, I looked at her with a look of such harrowing sadness that she said, "Well, you could still wear a C...I mean it's a full B." Great, I've got saleswomen trying to make me feel better. Obviously a B-cup is nothing to be ashamed of, but having always been a C it was hard to see my girls go.  I had to do something about this.

Hello sexies! I'm reporting live from BlogHer's Internet Cafe in San Francisco! So far, I've been interviewed by San Francisco's KQED, gotten my hair glazed and later, I'm going to meet Grover from mofo Sesame Street. The marketing crew is out in full force because, as Katie Couric said, the Man is now realizing that hey, women are reading the Internet and whoa, ladies are making monetary decisions. Who knew?!

Do you ever have a moment where you just think, "Whoa, this is some surreal stuff, right there." I just had one watching this video, where Katie Freaking Couric gives her best to the ladies heading to BlogHer and also, shows off her shoes. How does Katie know that it's all about the shoes?

Anne and I really are jonesing to see you all in San Francisco this weekend. And if you aren't able to go, we'll do our best to dutifully report and give the scoop.

Photo via igigi.com

Are you going to BlogHer? We are, and so are Sundry and Dooce and Maggie and Mopie and Pasta Queen and a bunch of other awesome folks. And hopefully, you! Anne and I are dying to sit down and have lunchies with you, or just say "hi" and find out what's on your mind. I'm going to be bringing some excellent swag too! If you're going to be in San Francisco this Friday, or in the area, we hope to see your cuteness in person!

And if that wasn't a great enough reason to go, one of our absolute most favorite blogs in the Fat Acceptance-osphere, Big Fat Deal, is having an Igigi giveaway for their BFD Meetup on Saturday. We already know about the magic of wearing dresses, and want to make sure that you have your chance too. Three lucky BFD readers will get their choice of an Igigi piece, absolutely free. The toughest part would be picking which one. Perhaps the adorable black and white dress I was coveting last spring? Something that can go from work to a night out on the town? Or an amazing cocktail dress for fall? Or something a little more formal? Oy, so many to choose from, so little time.

I started waiting tables when I was sixteen; sometimes I still wish I was a waitress. It's physically demanding, people can be unbelievably obnoxious, and relying on tips is a pretty meager existence, but there's something about the social activity of it all that makes it worth it. I've never been a fan of desk jobs, I don't like sitting for too long, and staring at a computer all day makes me a little crazy in the head. One of the best aspects of waiting tables is people watching. It is truly the bestest people-watching branch in the voyeurism tree.

My favorite person to watch was a woman who came in every Sunday for brunch, by herself. I had never seen someone eat out by themselves before. I wasn't the only person watching her--the other waiters thought it was "so sad." I didn't think it was sad at all, I thought it was marvelous. No one had forced this woman to leave her home and eat out every Sunday with only the newspaper for company; she chose to. The most enviable aspect of all of this to me was that she was so comfortable with herself, that she could just be with herself. She stuck with me for a while.

In college I made it a point to go out by myself. I went out to lunch, went to the movies, took myself for ice cream or a cappuccino. Basically, I started dating myself in college. This is when I really came into myself. I don't credit these outings with my feeling comfortable in my skin--the whole college environment did that for me--but these rendezvous with me, were a sign that I had found a place in this world, and that place was apparently the skin I'd been walking around in all these years. I was happy and comfortable in who I was. Then I graduated, I fell out of college and into a relationship, all that comfort flew out the window. There I was part of a "we," when I had finally figured out what it meant to be "me." Eating alone felt wrong. Sleeping alone seemed lonely. As soon as I left work each day I'd call my boyfriend to see what we were doing that night. After a while all that seemed natural. Then--we broke up.

Whitney was right. I do want to dance with somebody, want to feel the heat with somebody, with somebody who loooooves me. But now may not be the time. It really is a constant struggle to maintain a semblance of a social life and have a career, and to date. And dating is so hard. I recently had a guy send me countless text messages saying not very nice things after I didn't accept his offer for a second date. That was the moment when I decided dating is not for me. I do not need random men berating me by mobile phone. 

Independence really isn't so bad. In fact, I lead a much healthier lifestyle when I'm sans man-friend. I eat what I want, when I want to, and let's just say that I tend to make healthier food choices than the majority of the men I've dated. Instead of snuggling up to a big, burly man at night I hit the gym, do an exercise video or wander aimlessly around the streets of New York City. When my last relationship ended I lost 30 pounds, not from dieting, but just from returning to my normal eating patterns. You heard it here first: guys are fattening!

I've been seeing a nutritionist. When I realized that I had gained back every single pound (and then some) from a major weight-loss effort a few years ago, I felt like I needed a sanity check because--even though I eat my veggies and fruits and avoid fast food--something was obviously out of whack. The first time I saw her, I took a deep breath when she weighed me and tried not to panic when I saw the HIGHEST! NUMBER! EVER! She gave me a plan to follow, a plan that made me bristle when I saw that it suggested eating fewer fruits. Look, I told her, I don't think I can live my life without fresh strawberries, okay? Like, fresh strawberries and bananas and blueberries and whole kernel corn and baked beans, that's not what made me fat. The culprits are more likely the bread, the potatoes, the chocolate and the daily stop at Starbucks for my HFC-filled mocha with vanilla syrup. She agreed and asked me to just work on cutting the major carbs first and we'd deal with the rest later.

I've been working on cutting those things down, eating more protein, blahety blah blah. And then the last time I went, I had lost four pounds in five weeks. Four pounds. There was practically an audible "SPROING" as the sleeping obsession jumped awake in my brain. Failure! it screamed. You must do better! You are fat and spineless and defective and disgusting and completely without discipline. Why do you fail all the time? Why?

I am not a fan of nakedness as a state. Oh, sure, the kind of nakedness involving two people, usually naked touching naked? That's fun. But the kind of nakedness that takes place in a well-lit space, filled with women who have perfect, tiny, little Bratz doll bodies, the kind of nakedness required at most full-service spas? Not so much. However, I am overcome by my princessy tendencies, so I talk myself into being naked for the sake of pampering. I remind myself that I am being stupid, so stupid, and that if I willingly talk the talk of body acceptance, I should damned well walk the walk, even if that walk involves my naked ass hanging out of the back of a minuscule towel as I exit a eucalyptus steam room.

The first time I went to THE Bathhouse in Las Vegas, needless to say, I was freaked out. Here's what I wrote in my blog at the time:

I go to The Bathhouse for a massage (no, not THAT kind of massage, sheesh) in their lovely spa. I had been panicking about robes, because you had to be naked and I didn't want a wardrobe malfunction if their robes were not of the generous type, so I hauled my robe to Vegas for just this reason, but when I get to the spa, they have a lovely robe that makes mine look like it is made from burlap. So all is well. After my lovely massage, I am so blissed out that I even have the fortitude to swim in their gigantic 50-foot long whirlpool with the entire wall devoted to rain striking imported slate. And I do this naked. With other naked women. Who are naked. And can see my naked. You've come a long way, baby.

Look at all the bravado! You can barely tell how terrifying it all was, how I skirted around the slate halls, quiet as a terry-covered ninja, checking to see if anyone was in the plunge pool or the big whirlpool before disrobing, and then being kind of stuck in one because I was feeling too weird to jump out when 14 people suddenly popped out of nowhere and there were 28 eyes and 28 nipples all staring out at my body. But I got over it, due mostly to the fact that the people at THE Bathhouse? They are my people. Sure, there are some perfect, flawless creatures, but there are also a lot of 60-year-old women, and a lot of girls who might be classified as "thick." Unlike Qua (attached to Caesar's Palace), which is populated by a reunion of the girls on My Super Sweet Sixteen, or the spa at the Wynn, where a dozen Dina Lohan clones are sulking because there are unnecessary carbs in the diluted cranberry water.

One of my most favorite memories from last year was the weekend of Blogher 2006. Sarah, Kate, Wendy, Laurie (whom I still insist looks a lot like Jennifer Aniston and I promise I'm not drunk at this moment) and myself, sitting out on Navy Pier, trying not to get massively sunburned, and drinking strawberry daiquiris while boats sailed out into the harbor and music drifted over from somewhere near the bandstand. And then later, Wendy, Sarah and I camped out in my hotel room and watched a Hugh Grant movie, ate Giardano's deep dish pizza and drank a lot of mini-bar vodka. Wait, it almost sounds like BlogHer is about a lot of drinking. It's not. That's just my favorite part. Those intangible little moments that don't quite make it onto the agenda, like talking to Jennette about her $2 bus trip, or laughing with Corinna about tackling the waiter with the mini eggrolls at the cocktail party, or getting to brag that I got Shauna into my bed and she didn't want to leave. Sure, there are celebrity sightings (Amy Sedaris is SO WEE!) and parties and Butterball hot pads, but there are also valuable minutes with people who, up until that point, only exist behind the pixels of the monitor on your laptop. And that, my friends, is a special kind of magic.

So naturally, we're going to do it again this year! I, along with my partner in web crime, Anne, will be attending BlogHer in San Francisco next month. How about you? Are going to to be there? Want to meet us? We won't bite! We invite you to have lunch with us on Friday! Are you in? Chime in on the comments!

Ohmygod, you wanna hear the best news ever? The Daily Special has been named an Official Honoree of the 12th Annual Webby Awards for outstanding video! This is an amazing achievement (they received, like, a bajillion applications from all 50 states and over 60 countries!), but when you consider the giants our intrepid Daily Special team is sharing this honor with? Well, it makes our little show seem not so little anymore. We always knew there was a reason you guys were too big for your britches!

Huge congratulations to Kim and everyone who works hard to bring us The Daily Special each week! You guys rock, and now the world knows it.