Just another Sunday afternoon in DC...

So this happened Sunday.

My second husband and I. Eventually. (totally kidding)

And this.

Jenn and her new step-daddy. (totally kidding)

To say that I am still on Cloud 9 would be an understatement. To say that this guy is awesome just doesn't do him justice. From the first welcoming hug to his final goodbye as he walked us out, my experience with Mike Rowe was truly the best experience I've ever had with a celebrity. Okay a quasi-celebrity, but whatever. He was fantastic. (Mike, if you're reading this, don't let it go to your head, you big Diva).

For everyone else, here's how it went. I sent an email to mikeroweWORKS HQ Saturday around noon saying that if Mike had any free time at all on Sunday (he was in town for the USA Science and Engineering Festival in DC), that I would be happy to make the trek down to the city to sit down for a chat, if it was possible. 2 hours later I received a call back saying that if I could make it to DC around 1:30 Sunday, Mike would be happy to meet with me. Yeah I think I could fit that into my schedule. (Keep in mind that this has been an on-going thing, us trying to set up a meeting, I didn't just ask and receive, it was a process)

Sunday morning, Jenn and I piled into the car and drove to the metro station, took the metro into town and arrived early. If you've never been to the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, it's massive, it takes up over 3 city blocks and is about 5 stories high. So once we found the room where we were supposed to meet Mike, we didn't stray very far from it. (I was so afraid of getting lost in the vast expanse of the building!) We met Susanna from mrW who let us into the green room (the conference room set aside for Mike and his crew). She told us they were running behind but would be there shortly, help ourselves to any food/drink we wanted and off she went to catch a flight back to the west coast. We saw Matt Freund (from the Poo Pot episode Dirty Jobs). We snacked and we waited.

Suddenly, the doors opened, and his entourage walked in with him and then, in that deep, sexy voice, I heard: "Well, well, well." I melted right there on the chair. When they scraped me up, he put out his hand to shake mine but I clumsily asked for a hug instead. You'll get your handshake but let's get the formalities out of the way early. After the hug, I shook his hand. Whatever. Don't judge me. I'm lucky I didn't try for some tongue. My kid would be in therapy for (more) years.

There was chit chat, he introduced us to Mary who is the president of mikeroweWORKS, and to Antwan (I hope I'm spelling that right) who was his camera man. I introduced them to Jenn, who I said was my producer, director, camera girl, sound girl and entourage. I gave them some Snarkfest bookmarks which they found amusing (who wouldn't find a picture of a cat's ass sticking out of a drawer amusing??)

I digress (as usual). So while I was standing there with my crew of 1 talking with Mary, Mike went out into the hall behind the conference room (green room) to scout out a place for our chat. He called Jenn, Antwan and I out and he had set up two chairs for us to sit and two chairs for our camera people to sit. The man does his own grunt work. Just sayin'.

We sat down and for the next 45 minutes he answered my totally off the wall questions with a smile. He told me that he had just spent time with a journalist from CNN and did a live spot with CBS so this little off the cuff interview with non-standard questions was just what he needed. My thinking was this: YES he has a new show coming out and YES he has his mikeroweWORKS foundation, but I would imagine that answering the same questions over and over would really start to get boring. I did NOT want to bore this guy. So I asked him questions like: What would your stripper name be, and tell me your signature move. Trust me, we all had a good laugh at that. Also among the questions, what's on his mp3 player, would he consider voicing a cartoon character and would he do Dancing With the Stars if he was asked.

I have the whole thing on my video camera, and I promise you, if you are patient with me while I try to figure out how to get it all to work, you will NOT be disappointed when I post the interview. But what I'm planning on (trying to do) is to break the interview up into 5 minute segments, because I have a feeling I would lose people if I posted one entire 45 minute video.

Check back in soon and if you don't want to miss a thing, go up there on the right side under my picture and subscribe to this blog so that you receive an email with a link back here every time I post. Trust me, I won't spam you (I'm not that smart, don't give me too much credit) and you DON'T want to miss his signature stripper move. It's hot.