@Kath9 and Others:
This is somewhat off-topic, but has to do with communication style.
I asked a recent guest, a lovely and articulate young woman, in the course of friendly conversation, why those of her generation are in the habit of sending 3 or 5 word text messages, one right after the other, 10 in a row (which she had been doing), rather than organizing what they wanted to say and sending it all in one message. I told her it drives those of my generation crazy to have the text alert going off every 20 seconds 10 times in a row.
She considered for a moment, then explained that she and her peers view texting as an alternate form of talking, rather than an alternate form of writing. So "Hi." followed by a response of "Hi", followed by "What's up?", followed by "Nothing much, you?" makes sense when viewed like that.
I found it quite enlightening- I'd never considered that the underlying assumption of what texting or messaging is for could be quite different than how I think of it.
So maybe, when we get these requests like "Hi. Arriving at noon", it's not so much that they're being inconsiderate and unmannerly, but that they actually expect a reply like "Great, will be happy to accept you but need more info." Then they expect to reply "What info ?" And then you reply "Well, what brings you to the area, for one thing." And then they reply, "The music festival." And so on.
Seems like a terrible time waster to me, but then younger folks who've grown up with the technology can text and type with the speed of lightening, whereas it takes me a lot longer to compose a message.