SO! And AHA! My internet is still talking to me. Every day I put the baby in her Skinner Box and expect to see my connection dead again. Well met, web of the world.

There were some crazy amounts of librarians in Seattle over the weekend. Apparently the ALA conference was overbooked by something like 7,000 iPerps. This is critical to understand when I tell you the next part.

My old friend, Bean, came into town. She was a year behind me in school and followed me as Vice President of all things Awesome. Bean emailed me before she came but she’s a super-busy academic librarian so we didn’t finalize any plans, but I knew she wanted me to save Thursday for her.

Bean came and had lunch, and we caught up and gabbled about the time before I was an unemployed layabout. She told me a classmate from her cohort, Crimson, who I am slightly acquainted with, offered to put her up in her house for four days. Bean attempted to call Crimson to firm up their meeting time that evening, so Bean could settle in and spend the first night. Crimson said she was terribly, terribly ill, and not much else, and Bean hung up, looking a little puzzled.

Bean attempted to call Crimson back about an hour-and-a-half later, and was unable to reach her. I offered to put Bean up, because I was starting to get a little worried about her sick disappeared host, and I warned her that we’re up pretty early and the girls are on eleven as soon as they wake up. “Well, it’s okay, I have to get going to an early meeting anyway,” Bean said, and thanked me. Bean called a couple of hotels in neighborhoods near downtown, but they were booked solid.

Companion came home and we took Bean and the girls out to dinner. On the way to the superb Taste of India, Crimson called. At this point it’s almost 6:30, which is getting late to head downtown to catch the ferry to the island she lives on. Crimson claimed she went to the doctor and was feeling better, and that was about all she said, from the sound of it. Bean said she was going to take the offer to spend the night with us, since it was getting so late.

The next morning before she left I asked Bean what her plans were. She said she was going to see if she could crash with a colleague from her school who was coming in for one night. “You can come back here, too,” I said. “Keep me in the loop, because I don’t want you wandering around downtown with your luggage.”

Finally, I couldn’t resist and had to ask Bean something that had been nagging me. “Bean, did Crimson apologize for flaking on you last night, and did you guys make plans for your last two nights?” Bean said the answer to both of those questions was no. I told her I was sorry for being nosy, but I was really curious. Bean seemed unflapped, but being the person I am I was pretty irritated on her behalf. We were happy to put up Bean, but we were a little, “Who DOES that?”

On Sunday night, we went to an iJerk alumni reunion. As I threatened, I wore a nametag that read “Nick Belkin.” Almost immediately, a woman came up to me, waggling her finger, and told me she went to school with a Nick Belkin in 1974. I think she was trying to bust a rogue impostor. “He’s quite famous now,” one of my old professors (who I was talking with) said. “Oh reeeally,” the woman said. I had forgotten that he was alumni.

I ran into Bean later who had come down with a nasty cold since I had seen her on Friday morning. “I checked into a hotel in Queen Anne,” she said. “I gave up on Crimson.”

Halo was at the reunion as well, and she and I made plans for Monday night. While we were out on Monday, Halo gave me some scoop. “Friday night was a clusterfuck of Librarians on Capital Hill. You could not get away from them,” she said. “Oh, and check this out. We went into the Six Arms, and guess who was at a table with a bunch of other UW librarians?”

“Who?” I said.

“Crimson. She was sitting there having a beer,” Halo said.

“Oh HELL NO. Did you tell Bean?” I said.

“Well, no, because Bean was really sick. We didn’t want to make her feel worse.”

So there was Crimson, at a bar yucking it up, the very next night after disappearing on Bean, after being the one who extended the invite in the first place. Nice. But hey, Bean and I had more time to catch up this way. Next time I will invite Bean to stay with us again.

I think today is a good day to review the Rules of Being a Grownup, don’t you?