political functioning
Just got home from the annual Colorado Dems Jefferson-Jackson Dinner. Alexis is in town for the weekend and invited me to come along and sit at one of the Perlmutter tables w/ her. We got there a bit late-ish, just enough time to find our seats and check out the silent auction before the actual event started. Half of the 1900 people there know who she is now, after the campaign commercials and all. I'm just a guy :-P I get stopped much less walking through a room full of political people. The event was a pretty typical thing...all of the Colorado Congressional delegation was there, Ken Salazar, Hickenlooper, Ritter, etc. They all got up at some point to talk, give an award to someone, all the good stuff elected folks do. The keynote speaker was Pelosi and that was neat. Apparently this is her first "political appearance" since becoming Speaker. Good times. She wasn't a terribly inspiring small-s speaker. Decent enough, plenty of applause lines and criticisms of the current foreign policy directions, just not the kind of rousing speaker who would run for President or something. Not that she needs to...hopefully she'll be in her current job for quite a while, eh? It was neat to see her in person anyway.
After the dinner I found out I'd won one of the silent auction items. It was a "Night at the Movies" pack w/ 4 dvds (The Constant Gardener, Ray, Traffic, and Lost in Translation) and random movie candies and popcorn. Yay! So I ended up giving some money to the state party anyway (though not nearly the $4k somebody paid for lunch w/ Ritter, or the $1500 somebody else paid for a day skiing at Vail w/ Ed :-P I've already skied w/ his daughter at Vail, and that cost me much less thank you!) Ran into Evie Hudak outside on the way to take my stuff to the car. I still think it's funny I see her all the time and I *never* see her daughter, who lives a block away and I was kind of friends w/ in high school.
After the dinner and all the Colorado Young Dems hosted an after party, so we wandered down there. Saw John E and wife, Kyle, bunch of other random people. We were leaving to go to an Edwards thing upstairs when John Arp wandered by...he was my first boss at Kinko's waaaay back when. He's an actor locally now and had just finished a show and come down to see what the Dems were doing apparently. Saw him again later on when we ended up at the Supreme Court across the street. Very random. Fun evening though, and I finally got to meet some of the new folks in Ed's local office who weren't around during the campaign.
In other news, I found out that I didn't get accepted at Ohio State. I don't know what happened there. John and Julian pretty much assured me that I'd be accepted there...it was the one school I applied to that I thought was a sure thing. Now it's not. Minnesota or GWU has to come through now or I won't be starting the PhD when I thought I would.
I've started ripping Tim's CDs since he's in China and all and not using them. He's got some weirdly random stuff...some of which is pretty good actually. Yay for new musics!
WTF, Ozzy is trying to climb the walls of my closet. I think that's a sign I should stop typing.
After the dinner I found out I'd won one of the silent auction items. It was a "Night at the Movies" pack w/ 4 dvds (The Constant Gardener, Ray, Traffic, and Lost in Translation) and random movie candies and popcorn. Yay! So I ended up giving some money to the state party anyway (though not nearly the $4k somebody paid for lunch w/ Ritter, or the $1500 somebody else paid for a day skiing at Vail w/ Ed :-P I've already skied w/ his daughter at Vail, and that cost me much less thank you!) Ran into Evie Hudak outside on the way to take my stuff to the car. I still think it's funny I see her all the time and I *never* see her daughter, who lives a block away and I was kind of friends w/ in high school.
After the dinner and all the Colorado Young Dems hosted an after party, so we wandered down there. Saw John E and wife, Kyle, bunch of other random people. We were leaving to go to an Edwards thing upstairs when John Arp wandered by...he was my first boss at Kinko's waaaay back when. He's an actor locally now and had just finished a show and come down to see what the Dems were doing apparently. Saw him again later on when we ended up at the Supreme Court across the street. Very random. Fun evening though, and I finally got to meet some of the new folks in Ed's local office who weren't around during the campaign.
In other news, I found out that I didn't get accepted at Ohio State. I don't know what happened there. John and Julian pretty much assured me that I'd be accepted there...it was the one school I applied to that I thought was a sure thing. Now it's not. Minnesota or GWU has to come through now or I won't be starting the PhD when I thought I would.
I've started ripping Tim's CDs since he's in China and all and not using them. He's got some weirdly random stuff...some of which is pretty good actually. Yay for new musics!
WTF, Ozzy is trying to climb the walls of my closet. I think that's a sign I should stop typing.