Can I have your card?

So this weekend, I realized how Washington is unlike any city I've ever been to. I've never been in a place where networking is so important. Nikita, one of the Metro reporters here, told me that when she lived in NYC, she could sit at a bar with someone and talk for an hour and never know their name. Now that she lives in D.C., she said any time she tries to talk to anyone, within 10 minutes they want to know who she is, where she works, whether they can have her business card and how much influence she has to somehow help them up the ladder. As cool as it's been to have met some really amazing professionals here, I haven't decided yet it I like the system. Connections, connections, connections.

On Saturday morning, Carol, Craig and I met Mark Matthews (Ann Devroy's widower) for breakfast at a diner. He's such a sweet man. He was The Baltimore Sun's foreign correspondent years ago and he's still really sharp. He's ditching town for the inauguration to go skiing in Colorado, but we're planning on grabbing lunch when he gets back. That same afternoon, Craig took me to a White House correspondents' welcoming party for Obama's new press secretary, Robert Gibbs. Mike McCurry was there (Clinton's former press secretary, and the guy who I'm supposed to meet for coffee next week), and it was really nice. They introduced me to a lot of people, even to the entire crowd, but I enjoyed the food the most. Weird, huh? I just can't remember 50 names all at once. Craig explained to me on the way home how important connections are in both politics and journalism, and essentially kissing ass. Naturally, Washington is the mecca for both, so connections are supreme here. Craig said part of the reason Clinton was so successful politically was because he knew at an early age that he wanted to be president. So he apparently made this gigantic database with the names of everyone he met, or the important ones anyway. He spent hours studying it so that when they met again, he could remember something about them, leave an impression on them, and bingo -- networking bliss that marched him into the White House. Effective, but sick, don't you think?

Then, that night Carol and Craig had some friends over for dinner, including a German journalist who gave me his card "in case I ever wanted to work for a newspaper in Germany," and George W.'s former speech writer. When does the name dropping end? Clinton would be disappointed in me.

Otherwise I'm working on a couple of stories, and then tomorrow I'm going to snag free breakfast at Herb Kohl's office! He gives breakfast every Wednesday to all the Wisconsinites who stop by his office, and then I'm shadowing a reporter at the Supreme Court!

Peter Perl called me into his office this week to see how I was doing and to see if I had enough to do. I listed off what I had been doing and what I had planned, and he said that I've been as self-sufficient, if not more, than any of the other Devroy fellows. I love journalism and don't think I could do anything else, but I left work today at 5 p.m., and no one seemed to have any intention of leaving soon. I felt guilty leaving so early. It is inauguration week, so I guess it's unusually busy there, but if it's not the inauguration, it's something else. It makes me wonder, don't these people have families? Some kind of life outside work? I ramble now, but I know I'll end up going into journalism anyway, but I will say that the hours absolutely suck.