Continuing the story from parts one, two and three.
…It’s kind of hard to describe Miss Attila. I mean you have seen pictures and have read her but there is something quite different in actually meeting somebody for more than just in passing. She is short and wears an interesting hat that frames her face very well and glasses that accentuated eyes that a person could just look at all day. I immediately took a liking to her when she allowed me to buy a round. (To that point nobody allowed me to buy anything and I was feeling like a leech). We talked, she joked and we talked more. Sometimes we talked with Michael who came around several times during the evening before joining us and then with Val Pietro (photos at her site). Val was undoubtedly the handsomest man at CPAC. I was very pleased to be able to tell him what I thought of him and was shocked to see it bring him to tears.
By the time Michael excused himself I was very surprised to see it was already 2 a.m. I had missed the metro so she starting trying to scrounge a room for me. The base plan was for me to crash at Barbara’s if necessary but I found myself totally unconcerned. If worst came to worst I could crash at the bloggers room and frankly I was enjoying her company. So instead we sat down and talked more. We talked religion, Dr. Who and about our respective families and time just flew. Eventually it got to be 4 a.m. The hotel lobby was pretty empty and it was really beyond sleep time for me but Joy decided that it was worth trying. She took a taxi back to her hotel (she was staying somewhere else) and I headed back up to the bloggers room, it being Washington I was a bit concerned until she e-mailed me to let me know she got back ok.
When I finally got that e-mail my body finally got around to telling me that I was damn tired. I had been up since 6-7 and it was now getting on toward 5 the next day. On other days I uploaded my videos and set up my scheduled posts between 12-2 a.m. I was way behind so I started uploading and writing.
In one sense I was in luck. There was absolutely nobody else on the wireless so the uploads went up in record time. I was very tired but there was nothing to interrupt me except an occasional conversation with the people who work in the hotel (there is a lot of work involved in getting everything ready before you wake up and these guys are good at it) so shortly after 8 a.m. everything was setup and ready for a days worth of posts.
On the minus side I was wearing the same clothes as the day before and was in desperate need of a shower, so I didn’t want to mix with the public if I could avoid it, in addition if I nodded off I would likely be out for quite a while. So What to do?
The solution presented itself with the Arrival of Yid with Lid who as the first blogger in the room besides me. It hit me that this was a great chance to talk to bloggers before they got set up, thus began the first of nearly 30 interviews that would become DaTechGuy’s field guide to CPAC bloggers. As each blogger arrived I asked for permission to interview them and just kept it up in sequence. The idea was to do something light and comical so people could put a face to the people they were reading and to give them a chance to comment on meeting their fellow bloggers who they might only know through the internet.
In between interviews I gave a call to Smitty asking him to bring a change of clothes from my closet when he got here. Once it was late enough and when people started rejecting interviews I asked and Barbara kindly consented to let me grab a shower in her room so I could come out looking human. The plan to shave off the beard was Kaput and I got no sleep but once I managed to get showed up I was out of my totally Gonzo period and awake enough to carry me through the rest of the day. I think I might have been a tad repetitive and a little impolite to people I saw as I get that way when tired. If I was the latter to anyone (cough Dana Loesch cough) I apologize.
The big trick was to avoid eating for as long as possible, I figured if I did then my body wouldn’t have to divert energy for digestion so if I waited till I was beyond the wake up point I’d be fine. Thus began my last day at CPAC…
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