Is it strange that...

I was as excited, if not more so, to pick up this today...

than I was this:

Maybe if I had walked in cap and gown or had, oh I don't know, a job, the degree would feel more fulfilling. Right now I'm a little concerned about the amount of happiness something that cost me $40 (actually $10.03 after redeeming gift cards) gave me over something that cost $40,000. Hmm.

Becoming Obama-fied

I have always been one of those pesky Independents. While I vote mostly Democrat and never Republican, I have never been able to completely commit to one party. However, as one political button I saw downtown last week stated; "There ain't no party like a Democrat party" and I checked out the DNC to find that to be true.

I live in a suburb of Denver and could have easily avoided the mayhem and hoopla, but I was curious. I skipped the first couple of days, but after seeing some of my favorite stars at local haunts, I could no longer resist and wrangled a photo savvy friend into meeting me downtown.

I parked near the Brown Palace, where the Secret Service were swarming and headed straight down 17th Street, avoiding the pedestrian mall on 16th that can be crowded on a regular day when thousands of visitors are not in town. My heart skipped a beat as a motorcade came racing up the street towards the Brown. I tempted turning back, but my friend was going to meet me 10 blocks down and I didn't know what obstacles still lay in my path.

A few blocks later I ran into some protestors who had marched 4 miles from the Rage Against the Machine concert on their way to the Pepsi Center. Apparently they were led by Iraq Veterans Against the War (um...aren't they protesting at the wrong convention?) and seemed pretty peaceful, especially with the police line in full riot gear on both sides of them.

At one point the protestors began counting down from 10, making me a little apprehensive to try to find a way to cut through, but when they reached 1 and nothing happened, I pushed on. When I met my friend, Crazy Margaret (I'd go into why she is Crazy Margaret, but that would take a whole other blog), we headed up the mall to see what we could see. What we wanted to see was a whole lotta celebrities. What we saw instead was a whole lotta Obama painted on buildings.

We also saw strange things we don't see everyday, even in Denver.

We walked and walked and walked around. We saw motorcades. We saw protestors. We saw people from all walks of life...except celebrities. Or so I thought! Never second glance beautiful people in ordinary places. I did and missed Charlize Theron sitting 20 feet away from me.

Here she is at my alma mater with Stuart Townsend at the Impact Film Festival.

So my celebrity stalking was a bust but that doesn't mean the adventure wasn't worthwhile. I did witness firsthand a piece of history that will be hard to forget. Never before have I been someplace so alive with excitement and hope. Optimism that was lost with the last election is creeping back up. Say of it what you will but this was the first and only time I raced to the nearest tv to watch political speeches. If that means I've fallen into the Obama hype, so be it. I'm Obamafied and happy to be so.