Wednesday, May 12, 2010

There aren't many songs about Omaha...

Counting Crows sang a song called "Omaha". Grand Funk RailRoad sang about a wild night in an Omaha Hotel in "We're an American Band" (although I'm sure they weren't staying in the Candlewood Suites like we did). Irving Berlin mentions the city in "I'm a Bad Bad Man" from Annie Get your Gun but that's pretty much it.

Omaha isn't a place that inspires verbose repartee. It's a nice, if somewhat not particularly memorable mid-western town that gets taken over once a year for the Berkshire Hathaway Annual General Meeting, held at the Qwest Convention Centre in downtown.

Are you still with me?

Good - I promise I'll keep this reasonably brief.

We were in town for the aforementioned AGM. Mr Kitty specialises in the financial arts. If you work in that space, quality time with Mr Warren Buffet is something worth having, or at least experiencing once in a lifetime. He bought some shares earlier this year to qualify for attendance once he worked out that the timing would nicely coincide with another conference in Las Vegas a week later.

The attempt to get to Omaha was nothing short of epic. Flying Delta (that was clearly our problem) our flight left LAX almost two hours late which meant we missed our connection in Salt Lake City by half an hour. Delta rebooked us on a flight that would get us to Omaha. Eventually. They suggested we stay overnight in Salt Lake, at our own expense, then fly to Atlanta the following morning, and then on to Omaha, with a connection in Memphis, arriving at 4:30 the following afternoon, half an hour after the meeting would finish. Convenient.

Seriously. The airlines in this country are unbelievable... A bit of foot stomping got us onto a flight that afternoon after two seats magically appeared... Nightmare...

I digress. We eventually arrived (missing our pre-booked dinner reservation by more than two hours), but we arrived. As did our luggage. Win-Win.

The next day, whilst Mr Kitty was at the Festival de Warren, Miss Kitty tootled around town in her newest acquisition...


Okay - so I didn't buy it, but for the first time I actually got to choose the rental car. And you can tell... It was pretty cute and nice and zippy. It took me all the way to a place called Village Pointe where I did a spot of shopping (love J Crew). We ate at the Cheesecake Factory (I recommend the Key Lime Pie). It was more than adequate for a stop over.

As the Cirque de Buffett wound up for another year, the Kitties made their way to the airport for the next leg of the journey - NEW YORK!

Kitty xx

2 comments:

Sydney Shop Girl said...

Good on you for driving in a foreign country!

I love the car :-)

SSG xxx

Not Quite Nigella said...

hehe nice choice of car! Ack, I've heard terrible things about Delta and thankfully have missed out on flying them. Have fun at the Festival of Warren-hubby would love to be there!