Saturday, May 19, 2007

Back from DC

NAR's mid-year meetings are over for me, I'm safe and sound back in Kingman. I enjoyed the experience once again this year and will be looking forward to attending again over the next couple of years.

There has been plenty going on since it was time for me to leave; locally and nationally. When I left on Monday morning I was wondering about the reaction to the 60 Minutes hit piece that ran on Sunday night. NAR had a response typed up to share with the Members at the meetings and I thought it was pretty good. I've caught up with the (now) old news on many blogs and news sites... it's mostly much ado about nothing at this point. I will be in business longer than Redfin is the only prediction I'm going to make.

I did attend a couple of visits to our state legislators.. but in typical fashion Senator Kyl could not meet with the group I was with because he was working on the immigration bill that came out last week. Our group did meet with members of his staff though to share NAR's political agenda, it was interesting. Also we were all set to meet with Representative Trent Franks and did... but only for about 30 seconds as he was needed back on the floor after arriving to greet us in his office.

Weather wise it was muggy and it rained some while on my visit. While in DC one should expect to walk around quite a bit and ride the metro (I love the metro). I have to say that wearing dress shoes and other business attire is not a great combination for comfort when one has to do a ton more walking that one is used to and when one doesn't react well to muggy weather conditions. Heck, at one point I could have swore I heard my shoes snap at me to lose some freaking weight and have mercy on their 'soles'.

Of course I visited the 'bloggers lounge' on this trip. I was even given a 'blogger' ribbon to affix to my meeting attendance badge.


Ian and Keith from the Center for REALTOR Technology Web Blog were nice enough to make a bit of a fuss about it. I love the comments from that post by the way, good stuff. I had a few inquiries from other attendees about the ribbon I wore with pride during the meetings.

I'll probably share more about the meetings in the coming week when I get a chance to catch up with the phone calls and emails for business.

Some other photos...

"Senator Tarson you are needed on the senate floor to pass some important legislation"... LOL... yeah right.

No, not the a scene from a Star Wars movie... this is where you catch the Metro... many stories below the surface of the planet in some cases.


The fabulous NAR building a stone's throw from the Capitol building. (BTW, NAR dues are going up next year, maybe their option ARM mortgage is resetting?? I kid.)


The view of the Capitol from the rooftop of the NAR building. Really it is impressive, looks much better than this photo.

Why?? Well they serve Yeungling on tap here. Now I'm not a big beer drinker anymore (beer is too filling, even light beer), but I found this place last year located near the hotels where the NAR meetings are held (and also located near the Metro stop that takes me back to my hotel). In four days I managed to have myself 3 pints of this stuff. Yeungling is a delicacy to me as far as beer is concerned, I find it very refreshing... especially on muggy days.

I'll have more about the trip later on I'm sure, but there are some local issues to get caught up on and you bet that I'll have more on the local stuff this week.

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