Why Tradeshows Are Bad For Your Health and Other Odds and Ends

It's like clockwork...every year I put on some sort of tradeshow, and every year I get deathly ill. Not one to break with tradition, I decided to one-up my previous personal best, tradeshow-induced walking pneumonia, with a tradeshow-induced meningitis scare this week.

Luckily, I think I'm out of the woods with the meningitis, and settling for some awful sort of virus that has rendered me useless for the past three days. I've had 36-hours of a pounding headache, a stiff neck, swollen glands, sore throat, achy joints, and the pièce de résistance, vomiting.

Awesome.

Then again, compared to having meningitis, this virus seems like a walk in the park.

So although I vowed to write more this week, I've literally been dead to the world, sleeping my free hours away. So here's a mini-update of sorts now that I'm coming out of my zombie state.

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I met John Edwards on Monday, which rendered me a little starstruck. I can't say I've ever met a presidential candidate before, and getting to hear him speak and shaking hands with him was pretty darn cool. Edwards seems to be a truly genuine guy. I've been following his political career for quite some time, and when Tim's firm became a sponsor of a fundraiser for Edwards current run for the 2008 election, I knew I wanted to attend.

This event was all the more timely as last week, the news came out about Elizabeth Edwards being diagnosed with terminal cancer. The media has created a shitstorm around this and I for one cannot understand why people are up in arms about him continuing to run for president. I would encourage anyone who questions their choice to read John Edwards book Four Trials in which he writes about his blue-collar upbringing, meeting his wife, making a name for himself in the legal community, and overcoming the death of their teenage son. I think you'd find this couple is truly dedicated to everything they do. This is hardly a publicity stunt - this couple supports each other through and through. And while yes, Elizabeth will die one day from the cancer, she is still alive now. What does the media want her to do? Start digging her own grave? This run for president is something to keep her focused on living, not dying. Almost everyone I've known who has been diagnosed with cancer and given a small window of time to live has outlasted their original diagnosis. I'd like to think it was their will to continue living as normal a life as possible, and the determination to fight the disease off as much as possible. If this run for president gives Elizabeth a sense of purpose and encourages her will to live, who are we to judge. Only two people are entitled to make a decision on this, and that is John and Elizabeth Edwards. I will support both of them wholeheartedly in whatever may come their way in the months to come.

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Sunny days in San Francisco are the best times to be in the city. Wednesday was absolutely gorgeous, 70 degrees, and it felt like the entire city decided to go out and take advantage of it. My office is right across the street from the Ferry Building, and on days like these, the Embarcadero just explodes with life and energy. My coworkers and I walked over to Taylor's Refresher at the Ferry Building Plaza to splurge on overpriced chicken club sandwiches and tasty sweet potato fries, drowned in ketchup and a dusting of chili powder. My question to you is, if you deep fry a sweet potato, which is normally good for you, does that make these healthy fries?

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My home is beginning to feel a bit like Wild Kingdom. There is still plenty of grass growing in the open space around my house, so we have daily visitors in the form of deer, birds, and my new favorite, a jackrabbit. The backyard is overrun with lizards, who use the warm pavers as a place to soak up the heat. All this activity is almost too much for my two furballs, Max and Angel, who we refer to as "The Mighty Hunters." They stalk the lizards from behind the sliding glass door, licking their lips and wagging their tails. I can sit for hours with the cats, soaking in the sun, and watching the spectacle of nature. We are truly just visitors on their land around these parts.

Well, exhaustion is setting in for now and I must rest. More to come soon, I promise.