Day 2 from Chicago

Had about 6 hours of sleep last night which is twice as much as the first!

There was an 8:00am keynote speaker – General Wesley Clark – who did such a good job talking about the situation in Iraq. He woke us right up 🙂 From there, I went to a panel talking about building a bridge between Religion and Secularism. This panel was run by PastorDan who runs the Street Prophets site (I am too tired to get into linking tonight!) and the conversation was so damn GOOD! The session was too short for sure and even 90 mins. I consider PastorDan a friend as he is also a long time C&Jer as is his wife, but it is so awesome to see him in his element talking about religion and politics. For me personally, he makes organized religion not feel like so much of a threat to me. From there I was thrilled to run into a lady I met last year in Vegas who was returning home to San Diego after that conference to start treatments for breast cancer. One year later she looked exactly the same to me – of course, I missed her months without hair (or eyebrows as she reminded me!) and her smile was as bright as ever. That really warmed my heart as returning to this group had made me wonder how she was.

From there I was going to sit in on a meet the candidates session, but Common Sense Mainer called me and invited me spur of the moment to go into town to the Sears Tower since the weather was gorgeous. So – I did! When I get home I will upload more photos, but I added a few to Flickr from today. We had a wonderful time at the tower, then taking a water taxi to the Navy Pier and then having lunch and wandering the pier. This is such a beautiful city (in the summer!!)

A note from yesterday – I need to look to see if an interview I did with a Denver Post journalist made it in print or online.

I came back to the room and napped and then a group of C&J ers gathered for a lovely italian dinner in town. Then it was several hours of talking out on the patio until now.

Tomorrow is the big Presidential Leadership Forum. The Premier Event for sure. Must get sleep!

Oh – Jax – I got you another Obama sticker!