The real story from Saturday night was the Skepchick Bordello party. I didn’t really have a costume, so I just wore a low cut shirt to fit in with the Bordello theme. Thankfully a reader stumbled into me and gave me an extra Sheriff pin he had, so I was all set. One of the first people I ran into was Mary Myers, who may be better known to you as “The Trophy Wife.” She was super sweet, totally unlike her husband, who we all know is a huge dick who eats babies in his free time.A fellow party goer asked for my my autograph along with a drawing of a pair of boobs. I obliged. I think this may become my autograph standard, though hopefully a little nicer than after I’ve had three beers.
I also got to meet a bunch of the Skepchicks, including Rebecca, Maria, Carrie, and Amy. Speaking of which, I also bought two new Surlyramics, one for me and one for my mom. Amy, you’ve gotten me addicted!The Skepchicks sure know how to throw a party, because the costume contest concluded in attractive scantily clad young women making out with each other. And the male skeptics rejoiced. Twitter probably crashed at that moment from all the happy tweets.

Me: You missed it.
Hemant: What?
Me: A bunch of hot girls were just making out with each other.
Hemant: Whaaaat?! Noooo!
Ashley: *comes up and pecks me on the lips while his head is turned*
Me: Aaaaand you missed that too.
Hemant: Damnit!!Other perks of the party involved Phil from Skeptic Money doing a cold reading on me. Even though I know he’s not really psychic and I understood his tactics, it was still pretty neat and unsettling. In a couple minutes he was able to get out the name of my ex boyfriend who broke my heart and all sorts of details on him. Very weird. Phil, you should totally make a video about how you do it. But in lighter news, here’s Hemant and Sean Faircloth (executive director of the Secular Coalition for America) playing Rock Band:Eventually Hemant and I headed back because I was starting to freak out about my talk (aka, the beer was losing its effect). We ended up getting some late night breakfast food with some of our new random TAM friends before going to sleep. I got about three hours of sleep before my talk. I think this is still more than most people.

After the Sunday papers I finally got a chance to say hello to James Randi when he wasn’t busy with something. Randi is seriously one of my new favorite people. Not only is he so adorably small that I just want to hug him or smuggle him away in my suitcase, but everything he says is witty, intelligent, and assertive. And did I mention he was adorable? They had to get a milk crate for him to stand on so he could be tall enough for the speakers podium, and he literally went “Weeee!” when stepping up. I want him. Or to at least be like him when I’m 81.
One of my friends bought a deck of Tarot cards for various famous skeptics to sign, and they decided that I was now internet famous enough to make the cut. While shuffling through the deck to find a sex related card appropriate for boobquake, my friend Jamie tried to get my attention.

Jamie: Uh, Jen, I think Simon Singh is waiting to talk to you.
Me: What.
Simon Singh was one of the few famous skeptics left that I was a little too shy to approach, but then he went out of his way to find me to tell me how much he liked boobquake and my use of humor. I seriously can’t express how flattered I am that all these people I look up to want to talk to me. And to think that I’m only 22. Hopefully I have many years of skepticism, TAMs, and humorous activism ahead of me!

That night some of us headed out to the strip just to say we could. It was pretty, but that’s about all I can say since I don’t gamble. We did have a delicious dinner in Caesar’s Palace where Hemant lost his battle against an epic stack of pancakes, and our dinner conversation mostly was about Ron Jeremy and snuff films. We are all kind of weird, if you haven’t figured that out yet.

We returned to the Del Mar lounge and played the lovely drinking game Never Have I Ever for a couple hours. Let’s just say we have enough blackmail on each other that none of us will ever be brave enough to actually use it. Actually I think that’s all I safely can say.

And while I just spent a whole day flailing about all the famous people I met, I just want to say meeting all of my readers was just as cool. Thanks to everyone who said hello, asked for photos, listened to me be awkward, etc. Without all of you I wouldn’t have even been able to go to TAM! It was an amazing networking experience, a ton of fun, and educational. And I’ll be getting to the educational parts in my next posts!

(Thanks to Hemant and Jamie for some of these photos!)