Tuesday, June 10, 2003

Reunion Oblivion II

Finally, I saw a few people I recognized and who recognized me. One Fred Wasserman (now a curator in NYC) was kind enough to give me a leftover nectarine and that, combined with a stale pretzel, kept me from fainting dead away. (Geez, this is really melodramatic.)

At some point during the 'entry process,' I remembered that when I had attended the Jonathan R. Lax Conference on Entrepreneurship, my laptop had detected a wireless network that I was unable to access. So, hoping that being an alumnus might give me a teensy weensy bit of pull, I went to the front desk and asked for the network name and password. (Yes--I brought my laptop to my college reunion. No comments on this topic are solicited or will be accepted.)

The front desk didn't seem to know (!) and sent me over to the library. There I discovered, lo and behold, about 5 different wireless networks, including an open one, upon which ran about 50 servers. "This is great," I thought, before realizing that the thrill was in the chase and that having gone on-line, there wasn't anything I particularly wanted to do there. With my daughter playing at a friend's in the town of Swarthmore, I was stuck there until 4:00 pm. So I sat by myself looking out the library window at the rain......just like I did so many times as a student. I tried to take a nap, but the armchair had pointy arms so it was sort of painful.

To top it all off, I was so busy staring out the window in an anomic state that I actually forgot to attend the one event that held any interest for me: a panel discussion entitled "What did you do during the bubble, Mommy/Daddy?"....Because I was so busy putzing around trying to get into a bunch of wireless networks for no particular reason.

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