Stuff...

I'll try to get back to my original plan of updating this thing daily, even if it means there's nothing really interesting to talk about. Today qualifies for the "nothing interesting" category. Had the day off. Work's been slow lately, what with it being summer and people like to plan vacations around July. But I did get CC'd in an email exchange between my boss and the regional manager recognizing us for the show we did up in Dallas over the weekend. My co-worker, a technical director for the company, and I both logged about 32 hours each in a day and a half span. That included one 22 hour stretch on Sat-Sunday. We loaded up the gear into the rental truck here in Houston on Friday morning at 8am, and took the 4.5 hour trip up to Dallas, stopping at various other hotels where our A/V company have offices along the way to pick up more equipment to set up for a show on Saturday morning. We finally get to the location, a very gaudy looking Hilton, and guess what? We can't get into the ballroom until the next day at 5am. So for the next hour we drove to our hotel in the middle of a spectacular thunderstorm and checked in. Avoiding the Denny's across the street, we drive around for an hour and a half to find a place to eat. Evidently, while there are approximately 2,355,437 places to buy liquor and 4,658,412 places to purchase adult videos in Dallas, restaurants are in limited supply. I guess we were in the wrong part of town because near the hotel where we were doing the show, there was every manner of Chili's, T.G.I.Fridays, and Benniganses. So with heavy hearts, we settle on Denny's. That's the thing about Denny's. They strategically situate themselves near hotels as if to say "come on, just eat at Denny's. We have big color photos on the menu. What more do you need?" It's the ultimate cop-out eatery. So, after a particularly dry cheddar burger, we go to our rooms for the night. I only managed about 4 hours of sleep and was up again at 4:10am. We get to the hotel set up and tech the show (basically, seminars for a new Multiple Sclerosis drug) until 6pm and strike our set. We begin the drive back to Houston at about 8:30pm, stopping at Wendy's along the way. We finally arrive back at our Hyatt here in town and unload. It takes over an hour due to the fact that we couldn't get into the loading dock due to a U-Haul truck being parked there. There was a very lavish Hindu wedding reception going on in our ballroom, and there were Hindu people and Hindu vehicles everywhere. Loud eastern Hindu music and there was a strange Hindu set up on their stage. It looked like some sort of elegant Hindu living room set up with nicely upholstered Hindu couches and chairs. I'm not sure why that is. I guess so they can have Hindu scenes like what you see here. Anyway, we finish at around 2am, dropped the rental truck off and I'm home by 2:30.

All in all, it was a pretty tiring, yet, interesting weekend. It was my first time in Dallas. And one noteworthy thing about the show we did was that one of the speakers was David "Sqiuggy" Lander from Laverne & Shirley. It was a little sad, though, because the guy has trouble walking and received help onto the stage as he has been afflicted with M.S. Still, he was a very funny and engaging speaker. I was this close to getting the chance to mic him up with a lav, but missed it. He hung around and signed copies of his book. Interestingly, he has a new career as a professional scout in MLB baseball.

Well, I've typed enough for one evening. Goodnight.