So there I am sitting at my computer desk Sunday morning, two days before I am supposed to present at the ACS, without a car in the world. 

My roommate had split town two days earlier to make glee with his shorty, (who by the way is not so short).  I open up my Skype phone list that I used to use before those hot shots with the pretty green logo started charging.  Maybe it will jog my memory of forgotten friends, I think to myself, pretending like I had that many friends to forget in the first place.  Sure, you claim you have lots of friends, on Facebook, on Myspace, on Skype, on Second Life, on WoW, on Counterstrike, on Everquest, on your favorite blog, but how many friends do you have that are friendly enough to give you a ride to Chicago?

Zippo.  Yah, that's right.  Make like a lighter and burn in loserdom.      

I got one shot, and it's a long one, a really long one, like trying to make a space elevator using 60,000 mile long carbon nanotubes.  I call my sister's boyfriend, and hope maybe, just maybe, that he will be in town this evening, and be willing to give drive me 1.5 hours to my parental units, who are on vacation in the lands of pearls and harbors, whereby I can make like a real noob and use one of their cars to traverse the rest of the three hour drive to the Windy Metropolis in good undergraduate fashion. 

Why not ask my sister, you ask?  Because she is studying Chinese culture in Taiwan, and I doubt she'd even be awake, let alone willing to travel light speed back to the states to let me use her car.

So, I call, and no one's home.  

Ten minutes go by.  Thirty.  Two hours.  What was I doing by then?  God might know, but probably not.  All of a sudden a ring:  Yes?  You can! Great.  You mean you were alrady planning on coming into town and driving back to the state capital?  What a coincidence!  Another serendipitous moment in science, or at least for a desperate scientist.