Our annual conference is coming up next week, and I can't wait. It's my favorite week of the year. I bumped into someone recently who reminded me of another conference, many years ago, that I'll never forget.

About 15 years ago, I was working at a university as an academic adviser.  We usually attended one professional conference a year. I got to talking with a colleague, Gordy, who planned to go to the same conference that I wanted to attend. It turns out that Gordy had already registered and had a hotel reservation. In fact, he said they'd given him a two room suite. He said that he wasn't going to use the other room, so I was welcome to it. I thought it was a fabulous idea-a way to save on our organization's travel dollars.

Everything went off without a hitch until we got to the hotel in Miami. We got our keys and went up to settle into our two room suite. We got to the door, opened it, and walked in. It wasn't a two room suite. It was a standard hotel room with a King size bed in an alcove and a "living room" sofa that folded out into a hide-a-bed. The "bedroom" was separated by a thin louvered door, more flimsy than the ones on a standard home closet. The other opening to the alcove had no door whatsoever. "Two rooms" was a gross exaggeration.

I looked at Gordy and the blood drained from his face. We quickly decided that sharing a room was not what either of us had in mind. I called the desk and asked for another room. There was "No Room at the Inn."  In fact, there was some major event in town. The desk clerk told me it was hopeless. There wasn't a hotel room to be had anywhere within miles. I told Gordy the news. AWK-ward! We tried to think of what we could do. There was no other solution: we had to share the room. This was going to be an adventure. Other than my husband, I've only bunked with one other guy in my life-my little brother, and we were preschoolers at the time.

Gordy was and is happily married, and I knew his wife, Leslie. She worked in our organization too. I, of course, was and am happily married. I called my husband and told him about the situation-which he thought was a scream. So-Gordy and I shared a room. My only complaint is that chivalry lost out; Gordy claimed dibs on the King bed leaving me to sleep on the fold-out couch. It was the only solution, though. Gordy is every bit of 6'4" and would never have fit on the sofa. The bathroom had a real door on it so we could both shower and change with privacy. We were both no-nonsense let's-make-this-work types, and it did. Gordy was the perfect gentleman, and I hope I wasn't too unpleasant to room with.

I ran into Gordy at a store about a month ago. Since he's about 20 years older than I, he's long since retired and, of course, I now work at NCFR. I hadn't seen him in years, but when we spotted each other, we both started to laugh. My husband was a couple aisles away in the store. I waved him over, and I finally got to introduce him to Gordy... who will always have a fond place in my heart as My Other Male Roomie.