You were excited, bought the sunscreen, made the plans. Then you met with the famous designer. He didn’t listen to a thought you had. Even worse, his favors a color — one that you absolutely cannot stand.

You’re getting a bad feeling.

The rules are that the vacation and blog design are one package. As part of the prize you get to live with new blog design for one year or you happily get to pay the designer.

She told you that she has clients in many cities, that she travels 6-12 days a month. You discussed how you both dislike hotel rooms, how isolating they are. She seemed vibrant, intelligent, and curious. You left the tech social thinking of her as extra help for your business when you need it.

She sent you a CD you had talked about as a thank you for the tech social conversation!

One month ago, you met her at Panera and spent a work session together. As a friend, you introduced her to blogging. You thought that blogging might help her business and give her something to do when she’s on the road.

Every day since, she has linked to every post you put up. People are talking about your new blogging buddy — especially after someone mentioned the roses your new friend sent you to thank you for teaching her blogging.

You seem to have. . . um . . . a ”needy” blogging buddy forever.

This morning you read this in the Blog Herald.

You may have heard about one of the latest YouTubes making the rounds — the one about the bride who freaks out about her hair on her wedding day, and proceeds to have a meltdown resulting in her cutting her own hair.

You may have also heard about the tidal wave of publicity, once people heard that it was, in fact, staged, with actresses, a script, and a contract. In fact, it turns out all principals involved were interviewed on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and Inside Edition. . . .

You start to care about both of those news stories later when you get a call from an actor friend. . . His next job is too familiar.

He’s explaining how he’s going to be in a video, even mentions a YouTube release. He tells you the plot.

He’s going to be in an office working at a computer, when his boss, a woman, stops by to crticize what he’s doing. Her reprimand will be loud enough to humilate him in front of coworkers. When she’s leaves his cubicle, he gets two minutes demolish the office. He breaks everything, but the chair.

You ask who the client company is. He mentions the name of a furniture manufacturer.

He’s thrilled at the offer is $25,000 and a possible career . . .

Folks have been waiting for three years. The concert has been sold out at the stadium for months now, and there you are with box seats and full back stage access. This is better than anything you and your friend pulled off in college.

You took a week off work just for the occasion.

You’re in with band. It’s like you’re with old friends during set up and sound checks. You’re no music slouch yourself. The sound guy lets you listen in on the headset.

As rehearsal moves on, you pull out your laptop and start blogging your usual blog posts for the week.

On a break, the band comes over to see what you’re doing. The lead singer says he tried blogging, but couldn’t blog and write music too. He asks you a string of questions about your blog and blogging in general.

Then the day before the band leaves town, your fine friend says, “They want you to come with. They want you to blog the entire road tour all 12 months of it — $10K/month, all expenses paid, fine hotels, great food, big cities, Europe, UK, South Africa, Singapore, Australia, Japan.

It means being out of your job, your apartment, and on the road for your life in a matter of days.

You were feeling happy for her too. Until yesterday.

Yesterday you were listening to a podcast she used to talk about regularly. In the middle of it you started thinking, “Gee, this sound familiar. I must have listened to this before.” But you know you haven’t, because you haven’t listened to a podcast in over two months and this one is 3 weeks old.

You start to remember something. A bad feeling comes with it. Still it bothers you enough that you have to check it. You pull up your friend’s blog to find the same content is there in print. It’s paraphrased sure enough, but there’s no denying that the ideas are in the same order.

You think back to how you friend used to talk about that podcast all of the time and now doesn’t. You think about how she used to complain about having no time between meeting client deadlines and keeping up with her blog to get new clients. You think that the two might be related.