I had the wonderful opportunity to meet with a few of our fellow bloggers the other day – and what a time it was!

A group like this, and all of the diabetes prowess in the air, we could have scared straight the best diabetes educator or endocrinologist around…

We’ve got the awesome (and so freakin’ funny!) Molly & Dixie, me in the middle, “give me your batteries” Sara from FL, and Smiling Amber. Behind the camera is Amber’s sister who we let hang out with us because she takes such good care of Amber.

We met at a local Panera’s around 6:00 PM, and Sara immediately ran off to find some batteries for her camera (there’s a story behind that one – but I’ll let her share it…). It was a good thing too because Amber’s camera batteries were dead! Can you imagine?! An OC blogger get together without pictures?!

I should note too that we did all agree to be in the picture, but, for future get togethers, if anyone would have been uncomfortable with it we would have made them get in the picture anyway and then later worked some Photoshop magic to “obscure” their identity… I’m kidding. Of course we respect the wishes of anyone who doesn’t want their picture out there.

My usual meal at Panera’s is a bowl of their broccoli cheddar soup with a whole grain baguette. However, I had my mind set on getting my soup in one of those HUGE bread bowls – you know, the ones with about 100g of carbs?

See, I had been working in the yard all weekend. Not just the “mow the lawn” and “water the grass” kind of work. The dig, move, shovel, cut, hammer, “big project” kind of work. I was worn out and hurting pretty bad by the time Sunday night rolled around. Even my toe muscles were sore.

I was totally using all that work to justify a little bit of big bread bowl goodness. I could not wait.

As I placed my order, the gal behind the counter smashed my dreams of carb loaded heaven by telling me they were out of bread bowls.

So – I got my regular bowl of soup, and complained, all night, about the them running out of bread bowls.

By the end of the night, we were the last ones in the place, and they had to kick us out. I went to fill up my pop glass one last time, sticking the large, soggy, paper cup under the fountain and pressing the button – I was assaulted by loud hisses and spurts, awkward sideways sprays of pop bubbles! What?! Ok, try the other diet option – same thing.

Maybe they figured out that the best way to get rid of a group of diabetics was to turn off the diet pop! Dang them! It worked though.

Seriously, I had a great time. By the end of the night my face hurt so bad from laughing and grinning so much.

We have to do that again.

Oh yeah, for “..M..“, I totally failed. Dammit anyway.