Okay, here is the rest of the weekend. You can find pt 1 here. You may want to read that first, because some of it referenced here.
Saturday - Errands and Freezing My Ass Off for Hillary - Saturday was my normal laundry day, with the added joy of being slightly hung over and very tired. After that, I went plant shopping to fill the pots that I had purchased the week before. I bought a number of colorful plants, along with two basils, rosemary, and garlic (yes, I'm growing garlic!). I still have one more window box and a barrel to fill, and I'm probably going to call on Tyler to help me fill those with something funky.
The funny thing is that as I was standing on my balcony, which is festooned with Hillary posters, minding my own business and planting, two Obama canvassers came around to my apartment building. As they moved towards the door, they gave me the DIRTIEST look like I'm some sort of Communist or Socialist, not a fellow member of the Democratic Party. Ya'll really need to get over it, because I was planning on waving and being polite.
After getting cleaned up, I met Blanche and Mom at Olly's, so that we could walk over to the Hillary rally. The temperature had dropped continuously during the day, and while we had a blanket, none of us were really dressed for the weather. Once we got there, the line was already tremendously long, going up and down parking garage ramps and all over the White River State Park, which is where The Lawn concert venue is located.
At the party the previous night, Blanche had obtained two yellow passes into the venue, and after talking with someone else we knew from the party, we were able to get a third for Mom, not really knowing what they meant. There were two other passes available, blue and red, and we quickly discovered that blue was just a ticket, red indicated that you would definitely get in and be close to the stage, and yellow was going to put us on STAGE! Woo hoo! I had a stack of red passes, three that I was saving for Liberty, Stella, and Stan, and the rest I proceeded to distribute to people around me and other gay guys I recognized.
Around 6:30 (we'd been there since 5:45ish), the line started to move forward towards the security checkpoint. It was so cold. It was very nice to just get behind a building. We made it through security pretty easily (though if forgot about my metal pack of Altoid Mini's), and we made our way along the line indicated for the yellow tickets.
My excitement for the fact that we would be in the bleachers on stage was tempered a bit when I saw a ghost from my past sitting in an unavoidable position on stage. My ex! Ugh... I don't know how or why he was able to get a hold of those tickets, but trust me, he was the last person I wanted to see.
Anyway, we proceeded to take our seats and freeze our asses off for a couple of hours. Around 7:30/8:00 they started to wheel out visiting stars, which included a lot of politicians from other states and people from Hollywood. We got to see Ted Dansen, Mary Steenburgen, Sean Astin, and Rob Reiner.
Then we, the people on the stage, saw that Hillary had arrived, and it was then that Sen. Evan Bayh came out to introduce John Mellencamp, who sang his song "Our Country." After that, Evan introduced Hillary, and they were trying to stall because Bill Clinton was en route. He finally got there, and he spoke a bit before handing the mic over to Hillary. It very much felt like a rock concert, and if anyone saw clips of it on CNN, I was the guy in the red jacket directly behind her, jumping up and down with a yellow sign that said "Job, Jobs, Jobs" on it.
It was a pretty surreal evening, but I am glad we went to it!
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