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Well, the first day of YearlyKos was a little surreal, I have to say.  Yesterday morning, I got up at 7:00 am to grab a shower, dry my hair, wrestle with the flat iron (which I suck at, I have to say…I think my hairstylist just likes to laugh at my inability to properly use hair torture devices…), and slap some make-up on before rushing off to a morning media training session.

So, I get there, and there is no coffee.  None.  Nada.  Zip.  And as we all know, Christy doesn’t function well without coffee. 

Thus, I find myself going all the way back through the convention center to the hotel proper to get coffee at the cafe that seems about 800 miles away at this point.  And when I finally slog my way back to the room where we are doing training, there is a line almost out the freaking door for YearlyKos registration.  And it’s still only 8:20 am.  Wow — this is gonna be crowded, I think.

And strangely enough, people keep recognizing me.  The red hair is kind of a giveaway, I grant you, but for someone who spends a whole lot of time at home by herself or with her child, having this many people recognize you that you’ve never met before is…well, it’s going to take some getting used to, let’s put it that way.  The cool thing is that I’m putting faces to names — and several people who’ve been taking pictures have promised to forward them to me, so if and when I get them, I’ll post some for everyone to see.

So I do the media thing.  (Did I mention that Atrios and Markos and Jerome and…well, lots of great bloggers are there.  And I’m feeling rather in awe of the amount of words on the page that have been put out by the people in the room.  Very cool stuff.)  And we take a break for the bathroom — and I walk out of the room and who do I see but Joe Wilson.

In person.

And I introduce myself and not only does he know who I am, but he gives me a hug.  Did I mention it was a surreal day?  But it gets better…  (And yes, the hair is that fabulous in person.  As is he.  Kathryn in MA can back me up on this.)

After more media training, I meet up with Mr. ReddHedd, who is talking with TeddySanFran and Oilfieldguy — and after we get Mr. ReddHedd settled in with badge and information packet, we all go grab some lunch.  I had a fabu chipotle grilled shrimp salad with fresh avocado.  Highly recommended from the Mexican place in the food court for those of you who are reading from Vegas.

Then more video poker for a little while.  (The luck is not holding out, I’m afraid.  Not so cha-ching today.)

And back to the conference center to do an interview with the local NPR station.  That was really fun.  Siun is doing media coordination, and is such a delight — and despite being swamped is incredibly organized and cheerful.  There were three of us on the interview — me, NYBri and Pontificator — and I thought it went really well.  The radio host was well informed, comfortable talking about all of our blogs and what we were doing, and asked very on point questions for each of us.  It airs sometime Friday morning on the Vegas NPR station, but I’m not certain what time.

After that, it was a little time to relax — catch up with Jane and Pach who both got here in the afternoon (Yay!) — and then off to the FDL Caucus.

Wow, was that a fun time.  I came up with a fun introduction game, and I thought maybe everyone here might play along as well:

1. What do you listen to or have on in the background when you are hanging out at FDL? Please be specific. (If it’s porn, please don’t be specific.)

2. If you were on death row, what would your last meal be?

3. What is your favorite movie of all time?

We had these on sheets of paper, everyone wrote these out and then we shuffled them around a bit. Then everyone read off the sheet in their hands and the person who went with the nickname and the answers stood up. I think it turned out pretty fun for everyone and, honestly, it’s just SO fun to see who everyone is that we chat with every day.

Then Pach did a fantastic summary of how things are going with the ROOTS project — and there was some Q&A on that and other things.  And that was the caucus in a nutshell for everyone.  (Thanks to Kathryn in MA for letting me post a coupla comments to everyone while the caucus was ongoing — too bad the connection was so slow int he conference room or I would have chatted more.)

After the caucus, the Plame Panel folks met up for some wine and discussion at a table out by the pool.  So I’m sitting by the pool with Joe Wilson, Larry Johnson, Murray Waas, Emptywheel, Jane, Pach and Jane’s friend…and the surreal quality of my day hits me.  Boom.  (Okay, and Murray found some conference attendees who helped him find where we were by the pool who hung out with us for a while, too…and one was wearing a mighty fine kilt, I must say.)

Jane’s friend, btw, is the most amazing shopper in the history of clothing…Jane looks awesome btw.  Blue silk babydoll top, fabu jeans and lovely espadrilles today.  Gorgeous blue jersey dress with Marc Jacobs pumps this evening.  I’m going shopping with Jane’s friend!

Anyway, we’re all sitting out by the pool talking about the panel and the investigation and where things are going and…well, we’ll get to that on the panel this morning.  So more in the next post…