faboo mama

Just a warning, this thing is long.

This year YK was different. It wasn’t just the location or all the walking. This year I was a “civilian”. There was no volunteering for YK for me. I actually got to sit down and talk to people, lots and lots and lots of people. More than just a hi/bye thing. This made me happy. Very happy.

I arrived in Chicago on Wed. and pretty much immediately ran over to the Hyatt to meet shayera so we could eat. We ran into tons of people just trying to catch a cab back to the Hilton. Oh, the Hilton Chicago was very nice, with quite possibly the smallest closets of any hotel room in the US. Check out my view:

BTW, Lollapalooza was right across the street and even up on the 15th floor, you can hear all the crappy bands screeching from 8am on. Ugh.

But you don’t care about my hotel, you want to see YK pictures.

Wednesday, August 1

We got back to McCormick place (or McAirport as it was called by several people by the end of the weekend) and immediately went to the bar to check out the Flying Soloists. There was no room, so we grabbed a table and almost immediately people started flowing in. I had no idea that that place would be completely packed all weekend like a Tijuana dance club during Labor Day weekend.

cskendrick and me. We took off our glasses so no one could tell our super secret identities.

We drank, we laughed, we met some people…fun was had by all. Since I smoke and the building doesn’t, I moved outside:

Looking at this picture, I laugh at the innocence that poor patio would lose over the next 3 days and nights

Thursday, August 2

I got to the registration booth about 30 minutes after I arrived. It took that long because of meeting old friends and making new ones. I managed to stand in the P - Z line for awhile before shayera mentioned that I belonged in the A - I line. D’oh!

I got my bag and ran into brilling and mik and a group of others:

I took a quick tour of the exhibit hall as I had to buy a t-shirt before they ran out of my size and I needed to sign my StreetProphets quilt square:

I found kid oakland and we went to the African-American caucus:

There’s tons of famous voices from the afrosphere in this pic, but I still need to get permission to identify some of them. Just check my blogroll.

I also attended the California and Hawaii caucus, but there were no Hawaiians there or on the panel, so the 100 or so people there represented CA.

Matt Ortega, Julia Rosen (juls) and David Dayen (dday) led the panel and made us introduce ourselves. That sucked ’cause I hate speaking in front of groups.

I guess something was happening in the big room:

I met waitingforvizzi and his orange screen-named ipod:

He is not a girl. Someone else mentioned they thought he was female too.

This was nice and all, but Durbin was seriously boring me, I can watch him on TV any time! I needed a beer, but all that was available in there was Miller, some other crap, and Heineken. I met JR and we talked beer. Basically, we talked me into walking over to the bar to get decent beer. I left the big room and went to the bar. There was no one there. More drinkies for me! Suckas!!!

Friday, August 3rd

I bowed out. I was kind of tired of bloggers and most of the stuff happening either wasn’t up my alley or seemed like stuff that happened last year, so I hit up Chicago. I took my requisite photo of the bean or cloud or whatever it’s called and walked about. Didn’t do a damn thing touristy.

I headed back just in time to hike the 50 miles to the Netroots Candidate party. I got a nice photo of Scott Kleeb’s butt and this one of me and Russ Warner:

Just…ignore the gooferific look on my face. Warner made a joke and apparently when I laugh, I go into gerbil mode.

I also got a picture of real life married-to-each-other scientists:

Unstable Isotope and Free Radical.

Saturday, August 3

There was some presidential forum or something going on. They kept talking, but wouldn’t let Kossacks mcjoan or Jefferey Feldman get a word in edgewise. Rude I tell ya!

Text messages on the screen kept people laughing. I had to have hekebolos teach me how to do that kind of text. I never understood it and right when I got it and whipped out my phone, they shut it down.

Our peeps!

I had made this concerted effort to take pics with and of different people from last year. I thought I’d be too busy to take pics last year, but this year, I found I was having too much fun to remember my camera! But I did get these:

Me and Jerome (smile dammit!)

Plutonium Page, Frank and me–this one is funny because my daughter thought Frank was daddy with a haircut and a shave.

I’ll wrap up as this is ridiculously long and I’ve already posted some photos in other diaries. Thanks for looking.

The YEARLYKOS 2007: A photo blog by faboo mama, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.