May 17-20, I'll be in Chicago for the National Restaurant Association meeting. It's a gigantic convention of all facets of the food industry. There'll be suppliers, customers and everything in between in one place. On my side of the industry, it's a good chance to get away from work, wine and dine the customers and enjoy ourselves.

We work a lot and we work very hard. In a typical day, I'm there for at least 11 hours or more and I rarely sit. It's hard, but it's fruitful and challenging. One of the perks is the times when we can, as a r/d group, unwind and light up the town. I've seen this phenomenon a few times, once last year in Dallas and this past fall in New York City. It's very nice to get to enjoy the things everyone is passionate for in an environment that isn't pressured and all about enjoyment.

In Chicago, I'm hopeful to go to a Cubs game, but mostly I'm super psyched to get to eat at a few places. We're not doing Trotter's, even though it's a Chicago institution. But we're so lucky to get to go to Alinea on that Monday night. Chef Grant Achatz has a very polished and aggressive restaurant aimed squarely at molecular gastronomy. Now, that's a hard term to describe to people not passionate about food in the ways I am, but it's a completely de-constructed way of looking at food. Foodstuffs are pureed, foamed, frozen, aerated, everything... Just do yourself a favor and look at this re-count and pictorial journey through a typical Alinea meal.

But that's not enough; we're also going to David Burke's PrimeHouse and Vermillion, a very cool Indian-Latin fusion restaurant. It's going to be unreal and I can't wait to be able to tell the tales about these meals.

Also, I beat OS X Chess tonight for the first time. I can't believe it (it's so freaking hard)...