To the kind readers who emailed to say you’re looking forward to hearing me speak at Green Drinks on Saturday: You are v. kind, but I will not be speaking.

To Hannah and other people who thought I’d be standing at a podium doing a Q&A for an hour: No, I will not be forcing would-be drinkers to listen to an hour-long Q&A on a Saturday night.

Here’s what’s actually happening. In celebration of the upcoming Earth Day, LA Green Drinks is having a special Saturday event at the Whole Life Times office downtown. You’re all invited, BTW:

When: Saturday, April 19, 7 pm - midnight
Where: Whole Life Times, 1200 S. Hope St., Ste. 300, Los Angeles.
Cost: $10 donation, which gets you organic beer, wine, and snacks. There’ll be live DJs too :)

Barent, the organizer, asked me if I’d come early and, during that first slow hour while people are trickling in, hang out behind a lil “ask green LA girl!” sign in the corner, so people with eco-related questions could ask them. Sure, I said. Can you make the sign? he said. Sure, I said.

Somehow, that was written up thusly in the Green Drinks email that went out:

Share in organic wine, beer, and munchies (and, yes, they are yummy!) along with DJs, Green LA Girl - Siel, and guest speaker Jonathan Parfrey, Director of Green L.A. (as well as other speakers)

This is when I started getting emails from people about how they look forward to my speech. I asked for a revision — and this is what went out in the second email:

Green LA Girl, Siel, will start the night informally answering your eco questions and Jonathan Parfrey, Director of Green L.A., as well as other speakers will bring us up to date on the efforts to Green LA.

7 pm Green LA Girl - Siel, informally answering your environmental questions
8 pm Green LA Director - Jonathon Parfrey followed by other speakers

This is when people started wondering why I was doing an hour-long Q&A.

Before that email went out, I pointed out this might happen — but it’s v. hard to convince people who think something is already clear that it only seems clear to them because they already know what the event is about. Try explaining the difference between the above with my suggestion — “the night will begin with some informal mingling over drinks and snacks, with Siel available to answer any eco-related questions and conundrums you may have” — without coming across as a nitpicky bitch….

Luckily all the people involved with Green Drinks are nice and, even though I still think the text is confusing, did try to mollify my concerns…. My main concern was that people would think, from the description, that this event would be a boring, hour-long Q&A, followed by one speaker after another — and decide not to come.

Please come — It’ll be fun, and you’re all invited.

Back to the nitpicky bitch thing — Yesterday I met a couple friends for happy hour at Bodega Wine Bar in Santa Monica. They’d changed the menu a bit — and I found typos! There were wines from both Fance and Framce; a nice reisling was being offered as well.

I pointed it out to our waitress. Oddly, she got really psyched about it, laughed, and went to show someone the typos right away. Maybe Bodega’ll get its money back from the printer? I dunno —

So you might wonder why this blog has so many typos and confusing sentences, despite my constant editing of other people’s work. Suffice to say most people find it hard to edit their own writing –

Photo by Don LaVange

Comments | Email this post