The beginning of August was allll about YearlyKos in Chicago. I had worked my buns off for weeks and week prepping for it, and it was finally here.

I’m not going to write much about the conference - because it was work and I don’t like to mix work and my personal blog - but I will nerd out a bit and share just a few of the exciting things that happened to me while I was there.

While at the conference I got to meet:

Bill Richardson, Governor of New Mexico and candidate for President. Oh yes, I did.

Mike Gravel, the former Senator from Alaska and current candidate for President. Oh yes, oh yes, I did.

Sam Seder, comedian, author, and host of Air America’s The Majority Report and The Sam Seder Show. Um, so friggin’ cute…

Michelangelo Signorelli, host of Sirius’ The Michelangelo Signorile Show on channel 109.

Ari Melber (writer from The Nation)and Ned Lamont (former candidate for CT Senate against Lieberman). Ok…ok…I didn’t meet these two. I just looked at them longingly from afar. ha!

Jeffrey Feldman, author, blogger, and moderator of the public questions to the presidential candidates at the YearlyKos forum. He is AMAZING. Brilliant, funny, and just nice!

Amanda Terkel, Deputy Research Director at Think Progress. She and her entire crew were great. I loved meeting them all.

And the infamous Max Blumenthal, who if you haven’t seen the below video…you must.

Needless to say, I was the Political Paparazzi. haha

Beyond all the stuff going on at the conference, on my last day I was able to take a few hours and explore downtown Chicago. I got to go to the Museum of Modern Art (they had some Lichtenstein…I was in heaven), check out the waterfront, and take a trip up to the top of the John Hancock buildling.

The best part of the John Hancock experience was that it was free! By a stroke of luck, I was in line and someone walked up and offered me their City Pass booklet, which had a free admission ticket in it. I totally scored on that one.

Chicago was beautiful from so high up. I never expected the city to be so big. Here in DC we have height limits on buildings, so seeing so many sky scrapers was a nice change.

I was also shocked to find out how many gay clubs there were in Chicago. Granted, I got to go to only one on Saturday night - Sidetrack - but it was a good time. And the men there are much more my type - big and beefy!! MMM hahaha

POST CHICAGO - I had planned a vacation from the 8-11 of August for months. It was supposed to be a trip into the Maine wilderness. That didn’t end up happening. But since I already had the time off, I used it! It was the Thurs-Sun after I got back from Chicago so it was well needed. Eric helped me celebrate that Wednesday night (bastard for getting me so drunk!).

The next night I ended up meeting up with some coworkers for a few drinks, which ended up being a few too many, which ended up keeping me in most of the weekend. It soon became one of those, “I drank too much now I feel like watching reruns of Sex & The City all weekend long,” kind of weekends. We all need those sometimes.

This past Thursday, as you saw in my many posts, we celebrated Elvis’ Death Day. You can see lots of those pics here. It was such a great time. As a treat, I got some video of Drew and Scott retelling an Elvis story. You had to be there to truly appreciate the whole experience, but I think you get the idea.

It was a hilarious, hilarious dinner.

And finally, this past Saturday Drew took a bunch of people out on his boat which he stores in Maryland. Since I was in PTown last summer (in fact as you can see here, I was celebrating Carnival) I haven’t had the pleasure of going out on one of Drew’s boat trips before. I am so glad I now have - it was a BLAST!

If you get a chance, you should take a look at the pictures I’ve posted from the trip. Click here to see them. While I’ve excluded many of the “scandalous” ones - i.e. about a quarter of them were D & A hahaha - you’ll still enjoy them, I’m sure.

Ok - time for me to go to bed! It’s almost 1am and I don’t want to be completely exhausted tomorrow!

I’m going to try to respond to a bunch of emails and comments tomorrow - thanks for everyone who has continued to come and check out my blog and send me emails, even when I wasn’t actively blogging. It was really nice and much appreciated
*yawn* - Good night!