Brad Miller is a pretty cool guy... or what I did for summer vacation

Hello from Pittsburgh!

I'm sitting at a table listening to the many "intros" to the final keynote address by Darcy Burner. I meant to write this earlier, but the tumult that is my life right now caught up with me here, I have a $@!?*^$% cold.

I think I mentioned in my maiden comments here at Blue NC about just moving to the state and the Triangle area and still getting my bearings politically. But that isn't going to really happen until I get my bearings in my own neighborhood ;-)

So I get to the conference, and lo and behold... look, a Triangle Area Caucus is in the list of events! Cool, exactly what I need. A one-stop place to say "Who is that?"

Kim Yaman who blogs at dKos as MsSpentYouth (one of my favorite usernames) set this up as one of the ad-hoc caucuses, and there were five of us sitting there. I was happy to meet her finally, and she was all in favor of getting together as a local group much like the group I just left back in CA, the SF Kossacks, a most wonderful gathering of folks. But I digress...

So the five of us are sitting there, and I find out that Brad Miller is my representative... cool! Hopefully the looney tunes on the fringe right will leave him alone so I can get to see him in action... Well, whaddayaknow... he walks over to our little group and dear hubby and I get to introduce ourselves as brand-new constituents. Extra cool! He was laughing heartily as he told us "I'm okay, I'm okay..." when asked about the death threats. I enjoyed seeing him hanging out with a convention full of "rabid lambs"* I didn't realize he had been attending these conferences as long as I have, since the beginning.

Gina Cooper, the person who first organized the whole conference thing told me later (over a most delicious mojito) about how helpful Rep. Miller and his staff were when she was a newbie trying to organize the seemingly unorganizeable, a herd of cats who never expected to meet in person the way we did... and a snide cynical press corps who couldn't wait to write about what a bunch of wackos we were. There were many disappointed reporters that weekend.

Ms. Cooper told me she couldn't wait to call Rep. Miller to "tell him who you are!" Gina, I don't really need a special introduction at this point... I saw what I needed to see, that my "new" representative is as deserving of my support as the one I left back in CA. And that is one less thing I have to worry about as I return home and get back to unpacking boxes.

^{*Rabid Lambs: Bill "loofaboy" O'Reilly's affectionate name for us, I am proud to say... heh...}