kansas city: day 1

well, hallelujah!  it seems as though the universe has seen fit to pause the recent craap-storm of bad luck and strange fortune and offered up a most excellent trip to the great state of missouri.

yep, you heard me.  and it took me quite by surprise as well!

i landed in kc on wednesday afternoon, and after picking up the rental car, getting myself and my co-worker diana (aka 'my little helper') checked in at the hotel, and cleaning the plane-ness off me, i headed out for a very special dinner with some very special people.

14 or so years ago, my career in event planning started at the salt palace convention center in salt lake city.  while i was originally hired on as the receptionist, it was only two months before my boss and i both realized i had outgrown the position, and i was offered a different one, serving as the assistant to our director of events.  to this day brett remains one of my all-time favorite bosses (and i've had some good ones). he had high expectations but he also really liked to have fun, and we had a lot of it in the year and a half i worked for him.  he set the tone for the department, and i found that most of the event managers followed his lead.  one of the best examples was kenny, who always had a smile, a thank you, and a 'good job' on his tongue.  i adored them both.

kenny, denise, me, and brett

i've kept in sporadic touch with brett over the years, though mostly in the context of letting him know that he might be getting a reference call when i was on the job hunt.  i knew he had moved to kansas several years ago to serve as general manager for a convention center, but it took me awhile to figure just how close he was, to where i would be.  and it was only recently that i learned that kenny had gone to work for him, so i scheduled a dinner back in june, and i have literally been looking forward to it for months.

they chose a restaurant brett referred to as 'a kansas city institution,' called stroud's.  and as an added bonus, it was also featured on the travel network show man v. food.  in fact, now may be a good time to mention that in addition to my penchant for getting national park stamps during my travels, i've recently begun making an effort to patronize restaurants featured on various food and travel network shows...man v. food, diners, drive-ins, and dives, and anthony bourdain's various and random shows.  much like the national parks, it forces me to explore my surroundings a little more, and i've been pleasantly surprised more than a time or two.

how great for me that i got to check a restaurant off the list while enjoying delicious fried chicken and waffle fries and cinnamon rolls with brett, kenny, and denise (kenny's wife, who i also worked with at the salt palace).  as so much time had passed, we had a LOT to catch up on.  yet, it was also one of those experiences where you settle right back in as if no time has passed at all.  i think it's fair to say that that effortless ease for picking up where you left off is largely what makes my favorite people my favorite people!

but my wonderful dinner with old friends was not nearly close to the end of the evening.  when i got back to the hotel, i hooked up with diana, julie, and vanessa to head over to the power & light district.  the show didn't start until saturday, but we were all in town early for different reasons; diana and i for booth setup, and julie and vanessa for clinic visits.

vanessa, diana, me, and julie
(and random old dude, and nick, jason's friend)

i've mentioned my semi-addiction to dueling piano bars in the past, and power & light (a neighborhood of restaurants, bars, theaters, and other entertainment) has one called howl at the moon.  as it was a wednesday night, things were pretty quiet, and while the place had more empty tables than full ones, both pianos were being utilized and we settled in for a somewhat relaxing evening of entertainment.

but we expected to be a relatively quiet night turned into a quite interesting and quite entertaining one when a totally inappropriate suitor took a liking to the lovely diana and a totally darling suitor took a liking to me.  long story short, i didn't know that my 'suitor', jason, had any interest in me until hours later. initially i thought he was simply trying to be a stand-up guy in helping diana fend off the much too old and far too inebriated man who wouldn't leave her alone.  the 'fending off' involved a ruse that included diana as his sistah (i'll explain THAT in a moment) and me as his wife.

this is sometimes what happens when i introduce someone
to 'the stick'. i end up laughing, they end up pointing or
grabbing their friends. 

the ruse served it's purpose for the most part, and i enjoyed getting to know my new 'husband,' who, it turns out is a bahston boy.  a southie in fact. so if you've seen good will hunting, you'll know what i'm talking about.  you know that movie the departed?  well it's actually the depahted.  and it's kinda retahded.  and it was all super cute.  of course the fact that he had dark hair, blue eyes, and seemed to be a pretty stand up guy didn't hurt, but again, i was completely clueless until the end of the night when he verbally expressed his interest and asked for my number.

see here's the thing:  i'm not that girl.  according to diana, he walked into the place, saw me, and 'picked me.'  he sat down next to me despite the multitude of empty tables, and according to my co-workers, i was somewhat of an idiot not to reacognize his interest from the get-go.  but i'm not that girl!  i'm NEVER the girl who, when a guy walks in a room he thinks; 'that girl. that's the girl i want.'  i'm always the girl they get to know and THEN they think 'that's the girl i want.'  and trust me, i'm so completely okay with this (most of the time anyway).  but the concept of a guy 'seeing me across the room' yada yada yada is so foreign to me that it never occurred to me that he had any interest until it was almost too late.

if i knew then what i knew later, i would
have made him take a 'normal' picture.

the upside is that, as i was completely unaware of his intentions, i was totally natural and me and enjoyed a no-pressure fun evening with a cool guy, and the downside is that none of it really matters anyway.  because, despite the fact that i met a cute boy with whom there was a mutual attraction and who actually attempted to DO something about it, it doesn't really matter because he's a cute boy that isn't mormon.

is it any wonder i spent most of my dating years with non-members?  of course, that may be a contributing factor to my current singlehood, but seriously, non-mormon boys are just so much more NORMAL! buggah.

but, all that being said, it was a pretty phenomenal way to start the trip.  i took it for what it was worth and had a fantastic evening.