​I’ve spent much of this week at the NRA’s Annual Meetings. Dallas is hosting the NRA’s 147th Annual Meeting, which seems like a lot. This year, seminars include points on concealed carry and how armed people can interact more safely with police. The first Annual Meeting, a full 147 years ago, probably included a seminar on how to interact with woolly mammoths.

And outside, protesters gathered to demand responsible tusk laws.

This is not a blog in which I will feel ways about the NRA or protesters [I will not spend time analyzing protesters of the NRA or protesters of woolly mammoths]. I feel like you just might find someone weighing in on the politics of the NRA on one or two other websites.

This is a blog about hilarious things that are going on at and around the convention.

​For example, I first arrived yesterday and pulled into a space near Pioneer Plaza. They tell you to plan ahead for parking. My experience was that it’s surprisingly easy to find a space near the convention center if you show up at 5 am.

But I saw the cattle were all fenced off. How is this welcoming to out of towners?!

I sidled up to a few exhibitors. All morning, I was explaining to listeners that 80,000 people about more than 800 exhibitors were expected.

People who were there were quite vocal about the seminars being helpful and how no one wants a crazy guy to have a gun. One exhibitor said he hopes the NRA can get away from its “from my cold dead hands” history.

Protesters were kept a couple blocks away, not by chance, outside Dallas City Hall.

​I didn’t have to sidle up to any of the protesters. The protesters came to me. That was remarkably convenient. A group started making the rounds, doing interviews with each TV station and the radio reporters.

The protesters have received a lot of media attention, but after I talked to them, I asked how they liked answering the exact same questions again and again. Each reporter would ask a similar series of questions about what they’d like Congress to do and how they feel about John Cornyn’s background check bill.

Because a reporter asks, I also inquired if they felt better that exhibitors thought the “cold dead hands” history was played out.

​But enough about politics, gang.

​”Why aren’t you talking about Italian food?!” I can you hear you yelling at your computer. More on that in a moment.

Among the NRA attendees I sidled up to was a group from New Jersey. They had had enough with the politics, too. I asked what they were hoping to hear during the convention, and one of them said he was hoping to hear that it’d get warmer.

“We’re from Jersey,” he explained, with the exact accent you’re thinking of. “I thought it was supposed to be hot down here. But we’re all bundled up and it’s raining.”

This led to a discussion about my family’s history in the Northeast.

“I have some family in a town in Connecticut. Torrington. It’s north of Waterbury,” I said, assuming they’d have never heard of it. I’m not sure why I assumed they had heard of Waterbury.

“Ah! We know Torrington!” he replied.

At one point, made comfortable by my obvious connections to his homeland, he mentioned trying to find a place where he could get a “grinder.”

He didn’t want a “sub.” He didn’t want a “hoagie.” He wanted a grinder.

It’s possible there’s a dearth of good sandwich shops near the convention center. I told them if they wanted a Dallas experience and Italian food, go to Campisi’s. It would be, I explained, dimly lit to the satisfaction of an Italian family from the Northeast.

And good Italian food is something we can all agree on.

​The protesters did their part to keep me fed. I need to emphasize that I’m not coming out in favor of one group or another, but I should disclose that I hadn’t had breakfast and bought a Rice Krispie Treat at the protestors’ [I swear I’m not making this up], “Bake America Great Again” stand.

I would also point out the Rice Krispie Treat was okay, but it was just okay.

​​Even during all of this: 80,000 people are here, Dallas police are working with the Secret Service and have roads around City Hall and the convention center shut down … even during all of this, the Segway Tours continued. This one actually had to wait to cross the street between City Hall and the Convention Center because a police car was going by: