I wanted to interview Howard Dean at the Fortune Magazine Tech Conference. The Fortune people gave me the number to Howard Dean's people and I emailed them. Then, a few minutes later, I got a call.

“Hi Tanya, this is Howard Dean calling.”

For a second I thought it was a joke. We chat for a bit as he drove around Los Angeles and I thought, "This is so cool, why don’t public figures do this more often?" He made a date with me.

Later, one of Dean's people called to make an entirely different date with me.

I said, “Make sure Governor Dean knows we’ve changed the date.”

But when I arrived at the conference, the Fortune's people were in a panic. They were like, “HOWARD DEAN’S LOOKING FOR YOU!”

And I thought, "This is why public figures don’t make their own dates." But I have a soft spot for him now, I can't help it. A guy who was one scream away from being the leader of the free world gave me his Gmail address. That’s pretty trusting. I feel like emailing him right now and calling him howard, with a lower case h.