Lobby View

 

From the lobby of the Omni Hotel in San Francisco...

Some blah in-house music is pumping via the speakers overhead. It's not exactly John, Paul, George, Ringo, or Huey for that matter.

Incidentally, people, this is San-freaking-Francisco, home of Huey Lewis and the News. Considering all of the godawful Bon Jovi and other Jersey nonsense I hear on repeat making my ears bleed back in the New York tri-state, would one playing of "The Power of Love" be too much to ask?

I realize you're not going to play "Some of My Lies Are True (Sooner or Later)" because "their early work was a little too 'new wave' for some taste."

I'm coming off a not-so-great night of sleep, got dressed in the dark, and am sitting in the lobby before heading to the airport, so your mileage may vary with this diatribe.

Besides, it's not like anyone is reading it!

I'm ready to morph across the U.S. Where's Samantha Stephens ("Bewitched") to twitch her nose so that I could be back in my living room, biting into a slice of Grigg Street Pizza?

I know. I'm old and that's a reference that not many will get. I mean the Samantha Stephens part.

I'm not excited to be caged into the sardine can with a flight attendant who will give me enough hip checks on my shoulder to think that I suited up for the San Francisco 49ers.

Seriously, this one dude hit me no less than five times on the flight here. I honestly never thought of myself as broad-shouldered.

Oh, the conference (the reason I'm here) was fantastic. The speakers were very well received as were the topics. Questions were aplenty and I think attendees got what they came for. The feedback I heard was overwhelmingly positive.

And the moderator seemed to be well-received.

The thing people like about my style, according to what I was being told, is 1) my energy. I drop in an ad-lib or some other line to keep people on their toes. But my other big selling point is 2) my dogged determination to keep things on time.

There are a lot of things going on during the conference hours of  8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. So times will move around but I'll be damned if we're going past 4 p.m. because ballrooms and audio-visual companies cost money and attendees are frankly looking to either leaving or having a drink.

In yesterday's case, it was the latter, as I was able to sit back and watch it all while chatting.

Of course, there was that little issue of an earthquake that I mentioned in yesterday's post.

It happened during our second presentation of the day. The speaker had mentioned before the beginning of the day that she was somewhat nervous about her session. Yet she handled the moment with grace and charm.

Phone alarms buzzed in the room with the following message:

Emergency Alert

Earthquake detected! Drop, cover, hold on. Protect yourself. -USGS ShakeAlert

Nah. Nothing concerning about that.

West coasters are used to earthquakes. At least to the point where most in the room chuckled. The non-west coasters gasped.

I collected my thoughts, reached for my phone, began listening to KCBS radio, and checked Twitter. Ultimately, it was a 4.1 tremor felt out near Sacramento and Stockton. While some in San Francisco did feel it, we felt nothing.

Oh, it definitely sat in my mind all day, a mix of "did that really happen?" with "should I be concerned?"

In the end, it was a footnote as our speaker at the time did a magnificent job of brushing it all off.

Well, after a full day of a conference, a great dinner at an Italian restaurant in the North Beach section of the city, and a lousy night of sleep, a picket line breaking outside the hotel is the perfect way to wrap this up.

A cable car just pulled up and chimed his bell with the protestors on cue. 

Protestors want a contract. When do they want it? Why, now, of course.

Anyway...

While I might add a few words upon my return to Greenwich tonight, this will likely suffice for now.

Greenwich is at Trumbull tomorrow night at 7 (on WGCH, TEN, etc) and Brunswick is at Phillips Andover (Massachusetts) on Saturday (on LocalLive). I plan to call both and prepped for them yesterday.

I need breakfast. 

It's time to go home.