Back around the 13th of this month, you may have noticed me tweeting about going on a ghost hunt in Southern California. I never had a chance to explain what that was all about, so I received a lot of “WTF are you talking about?!” responses. My friend George Ruiz decided (apparently with the help of the Bui Brothers, who weren’t able to join us) to get together a bunch of bloggers and web video friends together for a trip to a “haunted” house. Now, I love ghost stories (even if I hate horror movies) and I’ve always wanted to check out a place that was supposedly haunted.

With the help of Team FISCH, a group of ghost hunters and paranormal experts, we went into the house in small groups (there were probably 30 of us all together). While I wasn’t on his team, Sean Bonner definitely had the best ghost hunting kit. My group was only equipped with video cameras and the gizmos that FISCH allowed us to hold. Here’s the video I took of my team’s trip inside:

June Gloom Ghost Hunt from Veronica Belmont on Vimeo.

And here are some photos:

You can also listen to some of the EVPs recorded on our run on Team FISCH’s Ning page, using the audio player at the bottom left of the page, and see all the tweets we posted during the evening. Now, while we didn’t see anything, there were points where I definitely felt the room get colder, and the hair on my arms stood straight up! I guess you can call me “ghost agnostic.” No matter what you believe, it was a lot of fun!

Thanks to Sasha Friedenberg for editing together my totally spooky video.

Last night I went to the Ben Harper and Relentless7 show at The Fillmore. Here’s my crappy video of their awesome cover of Queen’s Under Pressure:

Ben Harper & RELENTLESS7 – Under Pressure cover from Veronica Belmont on Vimeo.

The show was really great – as previously mentioned I’m not a big concert-goer these days, but I had a blast. Although, today my head feels like a blast went off inside of it (lightweight).

Anyhow, thanks to Jordan for the invite to the show! Their new album White Lies for Dark Times came out this month, so check it out.

Recently I had the opportunity to sit down and chat with two of my favorite organizations: Girls in Tech and Women 2.0. Both interviews covered some of the same ground, like my history and how I started working in this industry, but they definitely go about it in different ways!

For the Girls in Tech meetup, I went down to Santa Cruz (you’ll hear the tale of my harrowing journey) to NextSpace, a great co-working location in town (also home to the 12seconds.tv team). I had a glass of wine pre-interview, so I probably said more than I should on some topics…

Veronica Belmont as guest in Girls in Tech from Allan and Sun Lundell of Awake Media at NextSpace on Vimeo.

Saroj Yadav is the interviewer in the clip below, which was shot in my living room. The full blog post about it is here.

Yesterday I participated in the Upgrade Your Life program at Intel in Santa Clara. The company invited a group of female bloggers down to learn more about Intel and discuss mobility, clean tech, education, and women working in technology. The best part was meeting other women whose work I’ve admired from afar for so long:

Sarah Anderson, Beth Blecherman, Natali Del Conte, Gina Hughes, Erin Kane, Mia Kim,
Sarah Lane, Victoria Pericon, Helena Stone, Christina Tynan-Wood, and Maria Webster.

Disclaimer: Intel did house and feed us for the trip, but we’re obviously not required to write about the event. I just had a really great time meeting and networking with like-minded women and getting to hear their perspectives on the industry. So thanks to Intel and Emily Goligoski for setting everything up!

Tomorrow starts the busiest week of my year (Tokyo Game Show notwithstanding) so I wanted to give everyone a heads up on what’s going on with Tekzilla this week!

Tuesday:
We’ll be at the (Jobs-less) Keynote, and then roaming the show floor at Macworld trying to find the coolest stuff to put on the show. There’s a Macrumors party that evening that I’d like to attend, depending on my exhaustion levels. For live coverage, make sure you watch Ryan’s liveblogging at gdgt!

Wednesday:
CES baby! We’re all flying down to Vegas in the afternoon. Digital Experience is that night, which always has something interesting to see.

Thursday/Friday/Saturday:
Live Tekzilla at 4pm at the NBC/Revision3 booth (Central Hall #12133). Come see me and Patrick record the show, which should last about 30 minutes or so. We’ll have a ton of new products to show off, most of which I can’t talk about yet. :/
I’m also hoping I might be able to pop into Buzz Out Loud for a little reunion show, but we’ll see!

Saturday night:
We’re having a Tekzilla party at the Double Down Saloon! We’re probably going to get things rolling around 8pm, but I’ll send updates to Twitter if anything changes. I’ll be the one drinking the bacon martinis.

If you’re at any of these events, stop and say hello! Post any predictions for Macworld/CES that you have in the comments, and we’ll see who has the best intel. BTW, we have a winner for the shuffle contest! It was Mirko from Croatia (#433). Congrats! I’ll get that out to you as soon as I get back from CES.