After 21 years of representing the West Coast Franchise and other MFV expos, this PR lady is taking a break. I attended my own charity function, the Friends of Conservation Ball held in Chicago on Friday evening (the 18th). I hated skipping it last year to cover the press booth in Anaheim. Even though the Expo is this weekend, working on the Ball has taken any extra time. Besides when the WCFE was in LA we got to go to the cool shops and Mr. Chow's for dinner. I miss taking my hard working IFA gal friends out in LA.

It's just time for some of us to move on and experience new things. This charity is near and dear to me. Founded by the lovely Jorie Butler Kent of the Abercrombie Kent family, this is a win-win charity like no other.

Native Maasai warriors are trained in an academy to protect the wildlife and the reserves, helping to preserve endangered species in Africa. They get jobs, animals get protection--what's better than that?

Several fabulous trips were auctioned off and as you can imagine no one can handle them like Abercrombie Kent--so I bid on the game preserve trip into South Africa and got it!! Can't wait to cover another item on my bucket list.

The week before I attended the Franchise Update Conference as I have also done since 1991. They always pack a lot in to the 2 days and one of the highlights was trying to understand the real Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort. He clearly made money as fast as he talked!! But if you could get every third sentence it was a lesson. Let's see if Leo DiCaprio talks as fast when he plays him in the Martin Scorsese film coming out.

Also spoke on a panel about content marketing--did the PR bit and it was time to enlighten people about the shrinking media out there and why controlling your own content and messaging is so important in these times.

They say people always end up showing their stripes.My buddy Zeke the Zebra showed his proudly last Friday at the ball.