Who the heck is Rebeka?

Yesterday a friend and I had a librarian-conference adventure at NYLA. After driving nearly three hours to get there, our day can best be described with the word "surreal." This isn't an exhaustive list, but here are some of the things that we experienced yesterday:

• We got waylaid by an odd man at the trade show who pressed very bad poetry printed on flowery paper into our hands, along with Hershey's Special Dark chocolates.
• We tried to go to a conference presentation called "Intellectual Power to the Librarian" only to find it was canceled (the speaker said she had a "breakdown") and we got talked into watching its replacement - a one-woman theatrical performance about, well, the PATRIOT Act, intellectual freedom, libraries, stereotypes, and a dead body in a laundromat.
  
• After the above weirdness we got stuck on the shuttle bus between conference hotels for half an hour - when we could have walked back in ten minutes.
• Twice I got mistaken for someone named Rebeka. Not just a little mistaken either. The first woman excitedly exclaimed "Rebeka!" and was about to grab my arm when she realized I was looking at her with complete confusion. The second woman was actually convinced that she had met me that morning at breakfast, when this morning at breakfast I was in a car. Once she realized I was not Rebeka she told us that not only did I look just like this elusive woman, we were wearing practically the same thing. I wish I had seen her - I think she's my doppleganger.
  
• Saratoga is an adorable city. The parts we saw were charming, and there are tons of cute restaurants. We had lunch in a coffee shop called Uncommon Grounds, which I highly recommend. We had delicious bagel sandwiches and then gelato. My friend says the coffee was great, and whatever brand of chips I ate nicely suggested on the bag a few charities I might consider donating too. My kind of place.
  
• Swag was so-so. We both got kinda snazzy transformer pens, though I seem to have since lost mine, staple-less staplers, shirts from some database company, and several pens. Oh, and the poetry and chocolate.
  

Overall, I'm still not sure the conference wasn't a waste of time, but it was an interesting experience, and I had a lot of fun spending all day with my friend, who I don't get to see often enough. I got to end the day by hanging out with said hot boyfriend (see below), so the day was overall an excellent day.