"Excuse me, I have to go talk to someone else now..."

My job, it turns out, involves a lot of meetings, lunches, receptions, dinners and just a lot of people-meeting functions in general. Now, I have no qualms when it comes to starting conversations with people I do not know - that part usually flows pretty naturally in a room full of people who do not know each other and have no other reason to be there than to talk to the people who are there. "Hi, I'm Linda, I work for the consulate general " ... "I am the coordinator of international education [resulting in a puzzeled look]" ... "I do student advising and such [puzzeled look goes away]" ... "I just moved here from Denver" ... "Yes, I love New York" ... "I know, housing is just incedibly ridiculously expensive here" ... "Yes, the weather has been great lately hasn't it." ... The problem is, there are only that many subjects that can be browsed in casual small-talk with a complete stranger. And when that list runs out, you reach a point in the conversation where both communication partners know that the conversation is more or less over, and you start hoping for something to happen - that someone else joins in so that you can start all over again, that someone official gets up to give an announcement, or that one of the caterers suddenly drops a tray full of red-wine glasses on the white suede couch, making the whole "leaving the conversation" a lot easier. If your glass is empty, that could be a good excuse: "Excuse me, I should go get some more wine" (but if you have to empty the glass every time you meet a new person, it will become a very entertaining night very soon... maybe that is the solution) but then you realize that the person you were just talking to is standing all alone, waiting for you to come back... Sigh. Maybe someone has written a book on the subject? "100 ways to politely leave a conversation" or "Conversation killers for dummies".... Or, maybe the best solution will be to become insanely popular so that every single person at the party would want to talk to you - and then you only have a limited time to spend on each one...