As I watched the thousands of balloons descend from the ceiling on the Convention floor, I received this text message:

Signage looks GREAT, my little whip! Enjoy it…

Ahhhhh. Success.

The Convention is over. After five hours of sleep last night I feel like a rejuvenated woman. The exhaustion created by 16 hours of manual labor each day and 4 of partying for 6 days straight has subsided. More highlights coming soon…

Celebrity sightings are generally wasted on me. I don’t really watch tv. I enjoy movies, but really don’t connect actors/actresses to the characters they portray. All week long, as we worked behind the scenes, people would whisper, “Look! There’s the entire cast of the Daily Show! Look!” I would look, but not recognize anyone, having never seen the show. “Look! There’s the guy from Best in Show, and Mighty Wind!” Didn’t recognize him. “Look! The guy from West Wing!” Couldn’t even tell who they were pointing at.

There were a few people I did recognize, however. Larry King ran into me three times in the corridors behind the CNN filming area. After that whenever I saw him coming I gave him a wide berth.

***********

Maggie and I were returning from the bathroom and entered a secure corridor. Agents rushed towards us demanding, “Move to the side! To the side, ladies.” We did as we were instructed and watched Bono from U2 pass mere feet from where we were standing. For a moment, we lamented not having our cameras. Then we decided we enjoyed the moment much more being fully present instead of trying to take a picture.

***********

I entered the “secret” elevator. It was in a back corner, but conveniently located for moving thousands of signs from the 3rd floor up to the 7th. Bob from the Fleet Center was manning the elevator, which surprised me. There hadn’t been an attendant on other days. We chatted as I made trip after trip after trip. We stopped on 4th and a gentleman entered and stood next to me. I glanced over, smiled, and nodded a hello. He nodded back. He was strikingly handsome. Tall, dark hair, intense eyes. He looked vaguely familiar. The elevator ascended two more floors and he left, entering the VIP level on the 6th floor. Bob turned to me. “Who was that? He was in that movie, what was it, High Fidelity?” Oh. My. God. That was John Cusack. I never expected him to be so tall. Or so striking. He’s even more handsome in real life than in the movies.

************

Still moving signs up to the 7th floor, I waited patiently for the elevator with my bin of John Edwards vertical signs. A group of three men and a hoochie mama walked up next to me, also waiting. I glanced over. She wasn’t tall, but you noticed her. She was wearing tight white pants, a low cut red tank, and everything else gold. Hundreds of thin gold bangles up and down her wrists. A gold lame purse. And gold wrestling boots, blinding as the light reflected off of them. Hmm. Interesting outfit. All hooch.

Later that evening the emcee introduced the Black Eyed Peas. And there she was, on the stage, belting out “Let’s Get Retarded,” jumping around and being all that.

Elevator Bob and I got to be buddies during my many rides up to the 7th floor. He took care of me, making sure people scooted over and let me and my big bin of signs on. At one point two of us had bins in the elevator. We stopped at a floor, but there was no room for the people waiting. Bob told the folks he’d be right back. A man waiting mumbled something. Bob turned to my colleague and I. “What’d he say?” My colleague immediately responded, “He said, ‘Yankees suck!’” Bob laughed and said, “A good man, he is. I’ll take care of him.”

One of the best things about the Convention was being there for sound checks in the morning. Many of the speakers simply did mic checks, “One, two, three,…” but the performers did a full on rehearsal. Walking straight up to the stage and experiencing Patti LaBelle, John Mellencamp, the violinist who performed an absolutely stunning rendition of Amazing Grace, the Japanese drummers, the Middle School Drum and Fife Corps,… pretty awesome.

They weren’t boxed. 3000 “I’m a Healthcare Voter” folded signs, stacked in a corner of our headquarters, the Boiler Room, bundled randomly with strips of shrink wrap. This made them difficult to carry and even more difficult to stage. We did our best. We stacked them high in two piles. They were on the schedule for Wednesday but weren’t used. Thursday morning we needed more room in the staging areas for Thursday night’s signs. As I was surveying the area, a man walking by shouted, “Watch out!” I turned just in time to see a thousand signs avalanche towards me. I jumped back, narrowly avoiding being buried. They slammed into my shins, right at the area where there is the least amount of fat, muscle, or skin. The tears welled up in my eyes, but there was no time to cry. I was almost maimed by the healthcare signs. Go figure.

We had a 2-4 minute time frame to distribute 5,000 signs. I ran from section to section, passing out bundles as quickly as possible to the people in the end seats, asking them to take one and pass them down. Several people volunteered to help pass them out in each section, which made my job much easier. I ran up the stairs, trying to get to the top as fast as possible, making sure the people in the nose bleed seats got their fair share of signs as well. A woman stood up, reached over, touched my shoulder and said, “You’re the hottest Visibility Whip I’ve ever seen. You go, girl.” At first I was startled until I noticed it was a friend from San Francisco. Then I simply laughed.

It seems that a lot of the men volunteers here are in uniform. You can tell the politico wannabes. Khaki pants, crisply pressed solid colored shirt (usually white or blue), conservative tie, and… a baseball hat.

Eavesdropping on a conversation between two colleagues discussing a mutual acquaintance:

Person 1: She’s one crazy lady.

Person 2: (pondering) Yes, she is an interesting woman…

“Ask Lori…”

My ears perked up. I’ve generally volunteered for just about any task since I’ve been here. I wondered what adventure this next task would hold.

“Do you want an extra ticket to the Red Sox/Yankees game?”

Oh, yeah…

Minutes later Ben, Ben, and I were on the T headed to Fenway Park. We entered Gate C amongst throngs of people. We were jostled up to our bleacher seats, squeezing in among the other Kerry campaigners. Everyone was in high spirits. We were at Fenway Park – simply magic.

R. sat to the right of me. Every time a fellow staffer walked by he shouted their name. “Bruno! My man! What’s up, Bruno?” “Margaret! Hey, buy me a beer, babe. I’ll pay you back.” “Tom in the house!” Will you just watch the game?

His cell phones (yes, plural) rang no less than a dozen times in the first inning. After one of the calls he turned to me. “I am so getting some ass tonight.” I thought I must have heard wrong. “Everyone calls me. Everyone wants into the parties. They say, ‘Hey, R., can you get me into this party?’ and I say, ‘Are you putting out tonight? Yeah, I’ll see about those tickets.” I simply stared.

Outrageous conversations continued until the top of the 8th, when he mysteriously left without saying good-bye to anyone.

Ahhh, politics.