Blowing The Stink Off

Yep. We got out of the house last night and blew some of the stink off.

You're shocked, right? I know. I know. We never leave this place. We're pathetic. We fully realize this and will be trying to remedy this in the coming months. Anyway, we made a start last night when we meandered down to Keegan's to attend the MOB Bash.

It was quite the experience.

I finally got to meet my wing man and his lovely wife. Gary, very chivalrously I thought, ignored the rudeness of my demand that he buy me a drink and bought me one anyway. Sweet man with a sweet wife, who I might add, does something that I could never do: she homeschools their three kids. Even better, though, she enthusiastically said, "it's fun." My hat's off. They disappeared before I could say goodbye, but it was very nice to finally meet Gary, even though he pointed out that he's very disappointed with me for this post.

As Keegan's was packed to the brim with bloggers (even a few who were liveblogging the event), it was kind of hard not to meet people. I was very fortunate to add Douglas of Belief Seeking Understanding, John of The First Ring (the other fellow Cake Eater City resident present at the party) Noodles of The People's Republic of Minnesota, Ellen of Mama Ellen and her husband Doug of Bogus Gold, the very enjoyable Cathy from Cathy In The Wright and Jordan from Jo's Attic (both of whom, very bravely, showed up in their jammies) to my acquaintance. I also was pleased to meet Flash from Centrisity, one of the few liberal bloggers amidst the the hordes of conservatives, Mitch Berg from Shot in the Dark, and two out of the four Fraters, Chad and Saint Paul.

There were, according to Mitch, lots of political and media movers and shakers there. I didn't meet any of them. Apparently I don't rate and that's just fine with me. Although, I did recognize local Republican activist/consultant Sarah Janacek, but that's only because she's on the news regularly. As far as the media people were concerned, well, I did meet Mischke's producer, who was a very nice guy and who doesn't deserve the fate of me not remembering his name. Sorry. I also met Bob Davis' producer, Kodiak. Scott Johnson from Powerline was there, too, and created quite the stir when he entered, but he was surrounded from the moment he entered Keegan's and there wasn't any opportunity for causal chit-chat, so I didn't meet him.

And just because I know those of you who don't live here are curious, yes, Lileks was in attendance. Gary, very wisely, brought his copies of Lileks' books along with him and got them signed. Gary said something about them going up on Ebay today, so you might want to check. (And, yes, he was joking. He's not giving up those suckers for love nor money.) So, did I meet the great man? you ask.

Nope.

All evening long I stood no further than ten feet away from Lileks. Could I work up the courage to chat with the man? Nope. I am the world's biggest chicken. I don't know exactly what it is about talking with people I admire: I freak out, then I freeze up. I don't want to sound like a blathering idiot, or clam up so I generally just avoid the situation entirely and dodge and duck around like a dolt. The husband has no fear, however, and went up and chatted with him. Of course, he had the cigar opening to work with (Lileks and crew had fired up, despite the bar not allowing for cigar smoking). During their brief conversation, the husband says he pointed me out to him. I doubt I rang a bell. The Giant Swede was there, as well, and the husband got to chatting with him and introduced me. It took me a few minutes to cotton on to the fact that he was, in fact, The Giant Swede. I know, stupid me, but he was introduced by his actual name and I didn't make the leap that he would be in attendance. (Neither did he seem gigantic. He's somewhere around 6'2"-6'4". I've got nephews who top him easily. That and I'm relatively short. Just about everyone's taller than me.) We had a lovely conversation with him about all sorts of stuff. A very nice man.

Anyway, we had a great time meetin' and greetin' and can't wait for the next gathering.

So long as it's not over at the State Fair.

Posted by Kathy at January 23, 2005 02:09 PM