This morning I was up at the butt crack of dawn to get ready for a breakfast meeting. The group, named The Networkers, meets at 0700 every Friday morning. As part of this association, each member makes an effort to become familiar with the businesses of other members and strives to get referrals for them from clients, family and friends.

My friend Beth is a massage therapist and urged me to come out as a guest to see what it was all about. They are certainly a fun group and far less high-stress with the referrals than BNI, the other group I looked into a couple of months ago. Add to that BNI's yearly membership fee of almost $500 and there was no way, man. The Networkers are an offshoot group and are mellow, mellow, mellow. It was enjoyable.

I wasn't three feet in the door before I was snagged by an amiable older geekish guy. He asked who invited me, then proceeded to sit me down at his table along with six others who all seemed nice enough. They told me Beth would sit beside me and would be irked because they had corralled me to sit at "the Bad Boys Table". It all seemed kind of Ross-esque, so I had to smile.

They stood me up and I stammered and rocked and tried to tell the story of my business in 5 minutes or less, including taking questions from the floor. It came out all awkward which is odd since I've won awards for public speaking; maybe it was the ungodly hour?

I came home to a puppy in a crate covered in shit. Lucky, lucky me.

Half an hour later, the mud room smells of Febreze, citrus floor cleaner and dog shit. Mmmmmm, homey.

No calls from the agency who just two weeks ago loved me and told me I was "Fabulous!" because I scored 92% on their marathon testing. I'm really going to get a complex at this rate, kids, I swear.