when bloggers run around loose

This woman, wearing denim painter's pants and slightly banged-up red Timberlands, was sitting across from me in the AirBART shuttle from Oakland Airport today. She's going to be speaking at an event down in San Jose as one of a batch of "Online Divas"; I watched her trying to explain blogging to a hefty suit with a Southern accent. He held her card in one hand for a long time as she held forth on the election, gesticulating and smiling.

I couldn't catch her name, and from what she was saying I thought for a moment that she might be Wonkette, and I got all excited. Only upon getting home and doing a search did I realize my error.

Anyway. I'm watching her talk this guy up, and waiting for an opportunity to say something, introduce myself, do a little blogger shmoozing, but she's totally into her conversation. I assume, from the way he didn't put her card away right off, that the guy has probably done business with the Japanese. The bus pulls up to the Coliseum station and we all tumble off. I notice that she's only carrying a backpack, and think it strange, but I'm so intimidated by her focus on the suit that I don't say anything. Once inside the station, I sidle up to them and try to help them navigate the BART ticket-buying maze, but she's having none of it. I need to ask her [the information person in the booth] a question. Here I'm thinking, hey, bloggers gotta look out for each other, but no dice.

So up on the platform, waiting for the train and wondering if it's worth trying to make contact at all, make sure she and the suit get on the right train, I was guiltily amused when she realized that she'd left her suitcase on the bus. I mean, it's awful: she had to go back down and probably paid the "excursion fare" in time to get out on the sidewalk and realize that the bus--and everything that she hadn't packed into her bulging blue backpack--was long gone.

Intersecting worlds.