Again, late for my very important date…with my laptop and today’s post. Late to the conference I attended all day today. Late to an important lecture after getting hung up on a Dolittler demo with a potential sponsor (I’m still looking for love in all the wrong places). And late to get home after driving for hours in the rain on the return trip.

At least the flu I’ve been suffering this past week didn’t completely sideline me for this meeting (of the Florida Veterinary Medical Association in Orlando). I woke up at 5 AM just in time to gas up and join a peloton of SUVs headed north at an average speed of 90 mph (I really don’t speed like this ever, but the opportunity of safe passage in the middle of the pack while lapping up the gas-saving draft was too great to resist). Plus, the brand new Lexus RX 350 I got as a loaner from the dealership (mine is three models older) was luxuriously smooth, even at 100 mph (I only tried that once).

I know I’d promised you an analysis of the Times Magazine article but #$%@ happens. My eighteen hour day precluded the small detail of posting in a timely fashion and for that I apologize.

The good news is that the conference was excellent—well worth the expense (which my employer generously offset to the tune of the pricey registration fee). I did a lot of media training and nutrition stuff and still managed to get some excellent blog fodder from some interviews I conducted in the exhibit hall.

(For those of you who don’t know, the exhibit hall is the trade show component of the conference. Vet and pet-themed companies set up shop in a huge hotel ballroom where they take turns trying to steer you to their booths using cute dogs and freebies as vet-bait. It works.)

Now, seven hours of lectures crammed into one day—plus the eight hours spent sitting in a vehicle—would ordinarily try any man’s soul. But for me it was an exhilarating solo adventure that left me energized by the time I got home.

(It didn’t hurt that the car stereo was top-notch and I’d embarked on my journey armed with a fist-high stack of CDs, a cooler full of Fresca and a couple of home-made sandwiches. Add in a Starbucks at every rest stop and a couple of crunchy apples and this is the stuff of dreams.)

So forgive me, again, for my posting transgression and know that you can look forward to a whole week of great topics as penance.