Update II (9/13): Avery has the lowdown on the throwdown (You got that?).
I met Avery and Ambra almost two weeks ago, and I finally got a chance to post these photos. I’ve now met three members of the The Conservative Brotherhood in person (I met Juliette in June), and I look forward to being face-to-face with the rest.
The lovely Ambra Nykol, who’s from Seattle, was traveling on business that week. The three of us met for lunch in D.C., near my job. Ambra recently became a political columnist for a local Seattle magazine. She’s putting the finishing touches on her new site, so check out her current one (which looks good, by the way) while you still have the chance.
Avery Tooley is a graduate student at the University of Maryland at College Park. Look long and hard at his photo because I doubt you’ll ever see him smiling in any photos on his site. If you’ve ever been to his old blog, you may remember several unsmiling, hard-looking pictures. This is his new site. I don’t think he has plans to post a smiling photo of himself over there, either. It must be a guy thing.
Avery took this photo of us. He likes black and white pictures, so I removed the color from this one to see how it would look. In case you’re wondering why I have no prominent photos of myself in the post, it’s because I don’t like the way I look. The lighting was bad and I was having a bad hair day!
I first “met” Avery and Ambra around the same time, between December 2003 and February 2004, maybe earlier. Avery told me I was one of the reasons he started blogging (shameless plug). Although I felt as if I already knew them, I was still a little nervous because, as Ambra wrote in her post, “we can’t all possibly be as ‘cool’ as we come across in our blogs.”
But they’re both cool. It was almost surreal sitting there with them, talking like long-time friends. And you should have seen us during the picture-taking session. All three digital cameras were snapping away. We were totally oblivious to the people around us as we tried this pose and that. Let me come over there. No, I’ll come over there. Put the flash on. No, leave it off. Did you get the shot? Make sure you take one with my camera, too.
It was hilarious. But time flew and I had to get back to work. Avery headed to class and Ambra was meeting a friend. I’m waiting for the day when all the members of our conservative group get together. Can you imagine 11 people passing around 11 cameras as we arrange ourselves for the perfect shots?
Make sure you take one with my camera, too!
Update: Ambra “meets” Dan Rather.
