Man, am I burned out...tomorrow will be the first Sunday in four weeks that I won't have to work or travel, so that's nice. Yesterday, I was going to head out to the Vodka Moxie show, but after busting my ass to catch up at work on Thursday and Friday, I was just dead tired. I went to sleep at 10:30 or so, and got up this morning around that time as well.

We have a wedding this evening to go to as well, so we'll see how that goes. I don't really know the people all that well, so we shall see how long we stay. Hopefully we'll have time to head to another friend's housewarming party...though I doubt it.

We shall see.

For those of you keeping track at home, my Final Four is Oklahoma State, Louisville, North Carolina and Syracuse. I filled it out in 30 minutes this morning, knowing little about most of the teams involved this year. I have North Carolina beating Oklahoma State in the championship. Good luck to me.

(Just for Donna): Aventura/Hollywood/Ft. Lauderdale was nice. :)

I'm back today after four days of expo attendance at s n a x p o. Cool when you actually know some people in the industry and they unsolicitedly say hello to you and talk nonbusiness and business quite frankly with you. Sorry, I didn't get that at PFW from the "industry" there, for obvious reasons, so it's nice and new to me.

Folks in the s n a c k industry are nice people...still a good amount of family-owned businesses out there, so most of them know how to treat people well. The corporations, not so much, but the fam businesses do. Even the folks that manufacture the equipment and ingredients and whatnot are generally nice people. Many of them are in their 40s or older than that, but there are a decent handful of younger folks. Not many under 30 though, but that isn't expected as far as management of these companies goes.

I stayed in Aventura, and the thing was in Hollywood. The hotel/convention center was sweeeeeeet, as was the R e s i d e n c e Inn I stayed at. I guess the convention spot's new as of a couple years ago. You can see the hotel, if you really want to, if you go to the convention's official Web site (see above name and enter it as the Web address...I'm too chicken to post it here).

I did do a good deal of entertaining...basically going out for dinner with folks from the conference of all types...all weekend/week. I went up to Ft. Lauderdale yesterday afternoon to check out the Spring Break beach scene. Quite a scene it was...I would describe it as "comfortably crowded" and quite relaxed. I'm sure things amped up as evening and night approached, but I had an evening dinner event to go to, so I couldn't hang around for that.

After the dinner, I went to the hotel bar with two younger guys (33 and 25) that I sat with at dinner and was chatting with. The 25-year-old asked if I'd ever had a Mojito, and I'd admitted I never did. He said (and the 33-year-old backed it up) that the bartender made excellent Mojitos and that I should try one. So I did. It was tasty, but I don't think I'll be rushing to have anymore...I had two, which shows how good it was, but it wasn't a drink I'd clamor for. It seems like a drink that could be made really poorly by an inexperienced barkeep.

I also won't be clamoring for it because it's main ingredient, I believe, is rum. Now, rum and me never got along back in the day, and I suspect maybe the rum messed me up in a really weird, weird way. I almost feel drugged. I only had two and had really paced myself on other drinks prior to that to where I wasn't even buzzing. Business event, ya know? :) But this morning I woke up with a small, and unusual, headache. It's like this: I felt like I was going to puke, but my stomach wasn't bothering me at all and wasn't even feeling lurchy. Almost like my brain was sending the signal to the stomach, but the message wasn't getting there.

So I'm thinking, "Great, I have to take a flight with this? I'm done." I take two Advils and a Sudafed, in case it's sinus issues. Nothing solved. In fact, I'm breaking a cold sweat while packing my bags and feeling marginally worse. Then, I'm getting psuedo motion sickness on the relatively smooth shuttle bus ride to the airport.

I get to the airport and go straight for a bottle of water. I start drinking that and start feeling better. Good, I think. I get on the plane, feeling less sick but just hazy as hell, and I doze off a bit during takeoff--a rarity, since I HATE takeoff. The whole flight I'm feeling fine and a bit hungry even, so I eat the pretzels they give, and then during landing, I'm feeling the psuedo motion sickness again. I get off the plane and I'm fine until I get on the El, and I start feeling really hazy, almost sleepy. I get home and go nap until 4:15 or so. I wake up feeling fine again...so me and Gina take the El to see a videographer for the wedding, and on the El both ways, I'm feeling motion sickness. All evening, I felt on the lethargic side, unable to concentrate, in a funk and hazy and a little numbed to the world around me, in a way. I mean, I could concentrate enough to write this, but otherwise, I feel somewhat disconnected.

I couldn't figure out if it was maybe the rum, or the Mojitos in general. The steak we had was a little on the rare side, so I thought maybe that was disagreeing, but I've had rare-ish steak before. The salad had shrimp in it...with a weird dressing. So I don't know. I'd suppose if it were food disagreeing with me, I wouldn't be able to eat at all...but I just had a burger, fries and a coke and I had some Cheez-Its earlier. The other stuff were the last things I ate/drank last night. Is it food? Jetlag (from Florida to Chicago? Come on...)? Allergies cropping up early? Was I drugged? Or is it something more serious? I don't know...what do you hacks think? :)