Tuesday, August 26, 2008

A small part of history

Yesterday I lent a good part of my day to volunteer at the Democratic National Convention here in Denver. I did not have the sexiest of assignments--I was part of the Greening Team, and my duties included standing next to trash, recycle, and compost receptacles and telling people where to place what. Problem was, my new buddy from Nashville, Mbayja and I were in a corner where no one else was. We were able to see parts of the African-American Caucus though, and see two protesters be escorted out.

After awhile, we started wandering looking for other fun things to do, when we got tricked into volunteering in the kitchen with Susan, another volunteer. This was pointless except we got to see all the desserts being made for the events, and one of the cooks made us french fries on the sly. Here we are wearing our hairnets and showing off our rubber gloves.

We ended up escaping after lunch to wander the convention and I was able to purchase 10 pieces of Obama flair (buttons, if you will) and meandered down the 16th street mall. The only celebrity I spotted was Willington Webb, Denver's former mayor. Below are pictures of me, trying to be excited at the beginning of the shift, and of my favorite Big Blue Bear as I left the Convention Center.

I returned home for a few hours, than made it back downtown where I encountered an overly talkative ABC news producer whom I could not shake for the remainder of the evening. I joined a few friends and saw the end of Michelle Obama's speech, but since I had been downtown mostly since 6 a.m., I headed home around 9:30. My friend Alice got in though to the Pepsi Center! I also have some fun photos of police in Riot Gear that I will post later.

It's a really exciting time for the city having the DNC here, and even more exciting is that I have credentials to get into Obama's speech on Thursday at Invesco!

2 comments:

Maria H. Andersen said...

So jealous! Wish I was there!

PJ said...

Oh wow! Lucky you!!