PlazaJen: Passion Knit

Seriously, he seems like a really nice dude, one of those people who just emit a combination of charm, intellect, confidence & niceness. I was leaving the KMBC party, because even though they had fans in the ceiling of their very nice tent, it was humid and I had on a lined, long-sleeve shirt, and was rapidly in danger of melting on the spot. And it was after 7 and I was wiped out. Charlie (I call him Charlie, we're pals now) had just arrived & I was waiting to get around the person talking to him to hit the exit, and then everything just sort of opened up/broke up, and he walked towards me & smiled, and that's when all those great qualities just sort of blasted through, and I smiled, probably reminding him of a fat sweaty muskrat, but hopefully exuding a small bit of muskrat charm, and we shook hands (and ohmygod my ring finger screamed, he has such a firm handshake) and he said "Nice to see you" and I said, "Nice to meet you" and it was all meet-n-greet nicenicenicey and then I was out of the tent & he was on to the main throngs of people. No telling him anything crazy, just an ordinary "hi" & it wouldn't have been appropriate to dig out my cell phone & make him wait while we did the arm-extended self-portrait.

He's in town, broadcasting the ABC World News from Liberty Memorial, and his connections to KMBC's general manager go way back. The new office/studios are fantastic, they're the first in town to broadcast the news in Hi-Def. We'd had a tour earlier this summer when we'd gone there for the fall TV preview - and at that time, things were still a bit in-progress, cables everywhere & the lights had all just gone up, but even then it was quite impressive. True to most big open houses, I guess they were putting up pictures & scrambling last-minute last night to finish the place for all their fancy guests (present company excluded!) I took some camera phone pix from the balcony that overlooks the whole studio area, while the 6:00 news was on, and I'll get those posted at some point. For "real" pictures (you know, ones with light, not take from overhead, you can see HeyCameraman's photo stream, they look awesome & give you an actual view of the studios.

The most fun of the night was running into old friends from the old job, and catching up on what's going on with them, etc. Despite the heat, it was a nice party (I mean, an open bar usually does the trick pretty quickly for most folks), everything was quite classy, and I was glad I went.

Then, I came home & we watched a Dirty Jobs we had on the DVR - the one where Mike Rowe goes to Mackinac Island, and then to Canada to band geese? And my dreams were crazy. I was on vacation - with hilpalny, whom I've never met or even emailed, really, so I'm sure that makes her feel really good, crazy muskrat lady halfway across the country is dreaming about her, and some other knitters, knitters I didn't know, and we had been in this (unknown, unnamed) city for a week, and we'd all bought way too much yarn, and I was packing like crazy, trying to get all this yarn into boxes and suitcases and how would we get it all back on the plane, and meanwhile, Hil wanted to buy this really cool, enormous candelabra as a gift for all of our parents, and I was like, "Look, I can't go in on that because my parents aren't together anymore, and my dad's dead, and so if you really want that, you're going to have to figure out how you're getting that on the plane." And they didn't have cars in this city (Mackinac Island doesn't, everything's horse-drawn) and so I was driving this bicycle-cart contraption back and forth trying to make sure we hadn't left anything behind and trying to find a suitable box we could check through at the airport without having to pay more. Even in my dreams, I'm stressed.

Labels: I'm Crazy, kansas city, knitting