12:07 p.m. - 2005-11-10
sweating my face off with important people
Last night, I atttended "the networking night of the year for everybody who is anybody in Pittsburgh." Hmm. I'm not really anybody. And I was there. So there were probably a lot of people who weren't really anybody there too. But. There were some pretty high caliber folks there. The new mayor, the county chief executive, the Presidents of the major universities and medical centers and big businesses in the area. Heinz. PPG. etc. See, first, you sit in this big fancy auditorium that makes you feel like you're a member of Congress. And a bunch of people give boring speeches. It is approximately 900 degrees in this room. The seats are famously small ebcause the theater is so old, people say the seats are about 3 inches narrower and 2 inches shorter, from front to back than the average for theater seating today. There is also a lot less "knee room." Why they put all of these "important people" in the world's most uncomfortable chairs is beyond my understanding. The woman who was sitting next to me who is in my LDI class is 8 months pregnant. What a trooper! So we sat, in our best (read: Most Uncomfortable) suits and sweated while approximately 78 people got up and basically said this: "There are a lot of misconceptions about Pittsburgh. It actually is a great place to live." I mean, really. Two hours of that. Would we all be living here and active in the community if we didn't know that??
Then, we were FINALLY moved out into the foyer where there was a lot of free food and booze. It was jam packed, though. I saw a waiter carrying a tray of kabobs of some sort get basically attacked by a mob of businessmen. He actually looked alittle frightened and began to move away from the pack. One young guy had politely reached his hand in, trying not to bump anyone, and grabbed the end of a skewer. As the waiter backed away, pulling the kabob tray away from the ravenous group, basically all but one lonely little pepper slid off of the man's skewer and in an instant the waiter was gone. He looked so sad as he stared in disbelief at that pepper. He expression basically said "...and I don't even LIKE peppers...I wanted some CHICKEN!"
So, me and my crew of "young, emerging leaders" and I basically said "Screw it" and headed for the closest pub where there was much consumption of pretzels and domestic beer.
