I have been doing a lot of traveling lately – 4 trips this month, 3 of them in the last 9 days! That means I have been spending a lot of time in airports, and eating way too much bad, expensive food.
However, I have been trying to practice my networking skills, and have been talking to some very interesting people.
While waiting for a flight out of St Louis, I chatted with a woman who turned out to know about a business group that was just getting started and in which I was very interested. I had not heard about them yet. She is going to email information on their next meeting. I was able to tell her about a group that was a good fit with her industry, but of which she was unaware. By starting a conversation with an innocuous comment about the flight delay or the weather, we made a connection and each ended up coming away with a piece of information that was valuable to our careers. Of course, I still would have preferred the flight to be on time…… 
Upon checking into my hotel, the desk agent noticed the periodic table on my credit card. (It’s an ACS card, and I’m constantly amazed at the number of people who comment on it.) She mentioned how much she loved chemistry, and science in general, but she had a hard time with the math. I started telling her about careers outside the lab, that would let her be involved in science while not requiring too much math. I left her with a flyer and some web sites she could check out. Who knows, maybe I gave her some ideas for her next career move!