day one... or two... the first day anything happened at least

Today started with a whimper and ended with a bang. I made the critical mistake of taking the first shuttle to the convention. This got me to the Xcel Center at about 4 pm, hours before anything actually happened. I did get a bunch of reading and work done. Making the bad stop worse was the fact my shoe broke... I was left limping all night.

After nice speeches by Senator Norm Coleman and Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann the next 90 minutes were spent on mediocre speeches by a number of feel good stories providing background on John McCain. Yes, the reason 20,000 Republicans travelled long and far was to see the former superintendent of Arizona public schools.

Once they got back on track Laura Bush introduced her husband with a nice shout out from the White House. This night concluded with a solid speech from Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman. Not quite Zell Miller, but very good.

The surprise of the night was Fred Thompson. I asked the person next to me if this was the same guy that had ran for President. I met Thompson three times during his run for President and he was utterly lifeless each time. (funny story- Steve King was his opening act prior to the caucuses and once the speech was over, everyone flocked to King and Thompson stood alone) Thompson did an excellent job paving the ground for McCain and letting everyone know his story.

Following the speech I headed back with to the Nebraska delegation's hotel. After a whirlwind series of events I wound up spending the night with fellow Nebraska young person Lauren from Creighton. We wound up at an agriculture reception with the band Styx performing. While I had no strong feelings towards the band, there were a few members of our delegation absolutely loving Styx.... *cough*rickettsandquandahl*cough*

At the Styx performance I ran in to my friend George from Kansas. George gave us the inside scoop on another performance- this one sponsored by the Arkansas delegation featuring Mike Huckabee's band. We ran across town and made the very end of an amazing performance by Mike Huckabee and Capitol Offense.

Tomorrow I'm heading downtown and hopefully making it to the Palin rally in downtown Minneapolis.

Later!