Playing Tourist

One of the perks of coming to D.C. is that they feed the staff a lot here. Employee Appreciation days... VIP tour groups...catering for artists... there's always food laying around. So while I eat my delicious dinner from Red, Hot & Blue catering, I thought I'd fill you in on my day so far.

I slept in this morning until 8:30... which granted, is only 7:30 Nashville time, but it sure felt like a luxury. My hotel is one of those older D.C. hotels with funny shaped rooms. Nice place (I did get in the hot tub last night!) but wierd nooks and crannies. Had breakfast, and set out to explore the city a little.

I'm staying in a part of town I haven't stayed in before. I'm literally around the corner from the Ford Theater, where Lincoln was shot. Lots of restaurants and such, and the Spy museum, where I have to go pick up a souvenir for Delaynie.

Left my hotel around 10, and headed towards the mall, even though I didn't get up early enough to get a ticket for the Washington Monument, which I have never gone up in. On the way there I went to the US Navy Memorial. Very pretty, with a nice museum. Found my dad's naval records in the logs, and bought the hubby a US Navy Submariner coffee mug.

My plan was to meet up with Sandi after the Mother Earth event, which I'd decided last night I wasn't going to get to. I thought Al Gore, Garth, & Trisha would be the top of the show, at 10:30, so I wandered over that way about 10:45, and texted her to see if she was done. They hadn't gone on yet.

The setup for the event was odd - and from what I could gather, rather badly handled. People (none of whom I knew, for the record) apparently camped out overnight to get a good spot, and didn't. People like me, who wandered in after the event started, weren't all that far back. I had guestimated about 800 people there... I think that was a high guess, because I realized later that there was a large portion down front blocked off for cameras and a walkway. Maybe 700 is more appropriate. From my spot I got to see Al, and could see Garth, but not Trisha, due to some large speakers being in the way.

The stage was small, and Garth and Trisha had to share a mic, which turned out to be a bad thing. The mix that all the radio (and I assume the television) feeds got was horrid - Garth's guitar was overdriven, and his background singers were louder than he was. Trisha sounded fantastic. The house mix, however, was fine - sounded great on site, so I wound up being glad I'd wandered in.

After their ONE SONG performance at least half the crowd left, and I hooked up with Sandi for a few minutes. I should also take a moment to complain that biggest solo artist in the universe was a complete, neglected, footnote in this whole event. No idea why he wasn't on a main stage SOMEWHERE - clearly he could have been had he wanted to be, and if he didn't want to be, that's fine. But the whole thing seems to have left me wondering "why did he bother?" He always said he didn't do music half way, but this sure seemed like a half hearted attempt by everyone, thrown together at the last minute, very amaturely. I think I'd have rather thought he was spending 7/7/07 hidden away on a tropical island somewhere with his wife. Ok, rant over.

After that I wandered back up to a Metro Stop - I covered some major ground this morning, I'm here to tell you! And then headed into XM - aka Live Earth HQ.

The other awesome thing about working at Eckington is that everything works SO much faster here - because the info doesn't have to travel from D.C. to Nashville and back again. I got another Driver's Ed episode built today, scheduled a couple of logs, and am currently editing an episode of Music City Connection. I also got the Keith Urban performance from Live Earth ready for air - it's going to air at some point in Jon Anthony's live show tonight, between 8:30 - 11pm Eastern, and again tomorrow at 10am and Monday at 8am. It sounded great - and he had a special duet partner.

I think that's it for my day so far... dinner is done - so back to work I go!