What a day!

Tuesday we got our first hunch that Wednesday would be a little loony. Maggie Rodriguez let the cat out of the bag during our live talk back on Tuesday. She told us that she would be coming to Washington to interview the First Lady. Then she said something like this.

"Then after my time at the White House, in what should be the highlight of my day, I'm hoping to come by and finally meet you guys."

I like Maggie, we had never met, but she's got a winning smile and great personality. So I was looking forward to meeting her. But I knew we were going to have problems. We would have to live by two clocks that tend to be a little tricky. The White House clock, and the Network clock. By that I mean nothing ever seems to be on time at the White House, it doesn't matter who lives there, Democrat or Republican. When you go there you tend to cool your jets, and then when you get that shot at an important interview they speed you along, because quite naturally they are running behind schedule. Then there's the network clock. If the folks at the network say that Maggie will be here at 11:00 am, you can be sure of one thing, Maggie won't be here at 11:00 am.

So I was prepared for her to be late. So we waited. Then came word that the White House was going to give her a shot at a second interview, so Maggie would be delayed. I started to get a little antsy. I had a committee meeting at the Food Bank that I was chairing at 1:00pm. So now I started to do the math, and thought, oh man I'm never going to make it. That's when I learned the meeting was going to be on a conference call because few people were actually going to be able to make the meeting in person. It's a good thing too, because Maggie got here right around 12:00 noon. She down to make an appearance during our noon show. After the newscast we got a chance to visit with her. Then Andrea and I shot a promo with her. I was out the door by 1pm and on the phone for the meeting.

By 2:00 pm I was downtown for an event across from the Convention Center. Our good friend Ted Alemayhu, the CEO of U.S. Doctors for Africa was in town to promote the fact that they were going to begin sending mobile health clinics to Africa. The first mobile health clinic was parked there and available for tours. This is a picture of Ted with Russell Simmons at a similar event in New York. Officials and journalists were on hand to take a look. What makes these clinics so unique is the high tech. methods to deal with the primitive aspects of some of the areas they will be going to. After all if you head into the bush how do you power some of these high tech gadgets? They've figured out a way to do it with solar energy. So precise instruments will still be available to doctors in the field. Ted will talk more about the project on our 9 am newscast today. Tune in!