Just got back from Dallas.  In a deja vu all over again moment, Homescapes was once again nominated for an ARTS Award.   I wrote about it in 2006 and 2007 when last we made our appearance on the ballot, so I was expecting a similar “otherwordliness” about it this time, and again I wasn’t disappointed.

As always, the Dallas Market Center did it big (even going as far as a stick-thin model coming out in a unitard and headdress before - BOOM- opening her cape, raising it up and becoming a ” peacock.”)

Other than her and the poster, the rest of the evening stayed peacock-free (though one winner had thought ahead and wore a peacock feather in his tux pocket…or maybe he just plucked the model.)  There was even a shortage of preening from the winners, which I found interesting.

The mood in the room was more thankful than joyous, it seemed to me.  Many of the speeches gave thanks to people who had perservered and put up with the winners through 2009, so the bright side was that I wasn’t the only one in a wistful, sorta shell-shocked mood.

Or at least it seemed that way to me.

But don’t get me wrong, the evening was fun and worth the trip, and not just ’cause we won again.  Over the years I’ve gotten to know a number of the people who were in the room not just from doing business with them but  from conferences, roundtables and panel-discussions, so it really did feel like being surrounded by friends.

My speech, I’m told, went fine (though I always sort of black out about that kind of thing), but I hear the hi-def 15 foot screen was a bit “harsh.”  I overheard a friend tell another friend of mine that he’d never realized she had so many freckles.  “You looked like you had leprosy,” he said.

Yikes!

I do NOT want to see the DVD.