Have you seen this person?

Here's a grainy picture of me at the state capitol Tuesday for the beginning day of the 2009 Legislative session. This time around the big story is the budget and how the state of Minnesota will be able to make up for a 5-billion dollar deficit, the largest in state history. This is a story we've been following and we're certain to do several more.

But that's not the reason why I blog. My photographer and I stood outside the House chambers looking for elected officials from the Northwest Metro. When you move to a new area, sometimes it's literally like study hall trying to memorize the elected officials and then be able to place name to face. Politicians generally have egos and they don't like to be mistaken for anybody else.

When I was still a rookie reporter in Syracuse, my partner and I went to the Syracuse airport to do a story on the new low cost airline, JetBlue. This was pre-9-11, so we had good access to the plane and the ramp where people came off the plane. While there, one man got off the plane and came and stood right by us, just chatting about why we were there. He kept hanging out and wouldn't leave. It was almost like he was waiting for something. We shook our heads as he left. Crazy old man.

That man was Senator Chuck Schumer, something we found out after we got back to our "newsroom." We were properly shamed. We were clueless. I was from Arkansas; the other guy was from California. We could have interviewed a senator for our story, but we didn't even recognize him. Our professor made quite the example out of us saying, "Chuck Schumer loves cameras. They say the toughest place to be in DC is between Schumer and a camera!" I'm sure she still tells the story as an example to her students.

When I got a job in Shreveport, I made lists to memorize before I even started the job. Here, I did almost the same thing so I wouldn't make the same mistake. It's easy to report in a community where you know everyone. It's much tougher to start from scratch every few years. I didn't make the same mistake today, but I was rather surprised to be one of the older reporters in the gallery... times are changing... could this be next?

Nah, that's just Minnesota's next U.S. Senator, a face everyone will recognize.