" I keep my hands on the windowsill and notify him that I have a permit in my wallet and a pistol on my hip."
In Colorado, we have no notification requirement, and I would never tell a cop I have a gun. I tend to think cops get real nervous and might mistake my "I have a permit and a concealed weapon" as a statement of " I have a gun" and then shoot me.
I'll bet the cop knows you have a CHL/CCW before he ever steps out of his vehicle. I know the do in Texas, because the CHL's have the driver's license number right on them. Of course they still have to correlate that to your vehicle's tag number, and it's possible that the driver would not be the one with the CHL.
That's a tricky call, I'm sure. I just don't want the issue to come up if I have to get out of the car for any reason and take the cop by surprise. If he gets nervous when he's informed verbally, I figure he could get dangerously nervous if he saw it and overreacted. None of us has any guarantees that whatever approach we take will be the one that keeps us from being shot, I suppose.
Tone, demeanor and appearance is everything. As a fairly unthreatening-appearing woman, I've never had a cop get nervous when I have declared a weapon. Usually, I might add, because they've asked, based on my CWP that would have been flagged when they called my info in.