A wonderful surprise this morning as I sign on and sift through the weekend's e-mail: A budding storage operator in the Houston area read my post from a few days ago in which I urged professionals in the business to start their own blogs. Dario and Anna Vargas took my words to heart and launched their own blogventure! You can read what they're up to here. I urge you to visitand comment ontheir blog as often as possible. Then give another thought to starting your own.

This week, storage professionals head to Chicago for the Self Storage Association's spring conference and tradeshow. I was supposed to attend, but pressing deadlines have altered my travel plans. If anyone would like to share experiences, news bites or photos from that show, please e-mail them to me at [email protected], and I'll be happy to post them here.

Is it just me, or do Monday's come on like a freight train?