OK in the interest of full disclosure and at risk of looking like an idiot:
- Importing the session worked!
- Shift+Load didn't seem to work
- The plugins were all up to date
- Force Quit was loading on a remote screen, which was powered off. That's really dumb--sorry! That's what the gray bar meant. I know, #awful.
Thanks everyone for the help I did learn a few new tricks and that is much appreciated!