I met my friend Jess today for lunch. We ate potatoes she had baked in her office microwave, complete with sour cream, cheddar cheese, broccoli and black eyed peas. It wasn’t your standard work lunch and so to accompany it, we had not-so-standard conversation. We talked about the future and the past. About our levels of contentment with our current states of being but also how we are both looking for love and partnership in our lives. About board games, friends and real estate. About serendipity and coincidences.

I’ve had a series of encounters and coincidences today. As I walked over to meet up with Jess I called my mother. She said that she had woken up that morning thinking that she needed to remind me to buy a plane ticket for my trip home to Portland in December. But when she sat down at the computer to write me a reminder email, she found the confirmation email that I had just forwarded her from Travelocity with my itinerary. At about 11:30 this morning (about the same time my mother was waking up in Portland), I had suddenly thought to myself, “I need to buy my plane ticket today.” It was a good thing I did, because as I made my seat selections, each flight had no more than five seats left available. The energy was flowing back and forth between us today, communicating some unknown urgency in buying that plane ticket.

This afternoon I was waiting to cross Market St. at 36th, when the woman standing next to me starts talking. She said, “It isn’t safe to stand in the middle of the street anymore!” While I was taken aback by the statement (when is it safe to stand in the middle of the street?) I knew what she meant. She continued to tell me that she had just had a very close call with a cab, nearly getting knocked down while crossing with the light. As we parted on the other side of the street, I offered a sincere “take care,” and she sent me on my way with a “have a lovely day, honey.”

As I was walking across campus this afternoon at 4:45, plugged into the pod, a young foreign student stopped me to ask directions. I don’t know why she stopped me, I don’t think I was looking particularly approachable, but I was who she picked. She was trying to get to the CA (Christian Association) House, for a meeting. The CA House is a very liberal, open and affirming religious organization and I happen to serve on their board as the Unitarian representative. I thought it was neat that she stopped me to help her get to a location with which I am affiliated.

This evening I was at the Metroblogging Philadelphia happy hour at the New Wave Cafe (it was terrific to meet some of the bloggers who I read, email and harass on a regular basis). I happened to take a look at my phone at around 7:45 and I see I’ve missed two calls from my friend Erin. She was over at her sister’s house, with a dead battery, and no one to give her a jumpstart. I said goodbye to the metrobloggers and went to meet her. Once I got there, I realized that while I have a nice, new set of jumper cables (given to me as a thank you gift by my ex-boyfriend’s father on a particularly cold day in January, two years ago), I have never actually had to jump a car. There was a guy standing down the street a few doors away, who saw us standing in the street, reading the directions on the jumper cable box and in the car owner’s manual and came down to help. He shook his head at the level of corrosion on my battery and said, “Get some Coke or Pepsi and pour it on there, burn some of that crud off” but then pulled a screwdriver out of his pocket and started scraping at it until it was clean enough to use. He then hooked us up, I started my car, Erin started her’s and we were set. Our impromptu mechanic ducked his head and smiled shyly as we heaped thank you’s upon him, and slipped back into the shadows.

Now I’m home, feeling really lovely and satisfied by the number of unique, unusual and interesting encounters I’ve had with people today. If only everyday could be like this one.

and his name is Blankbaby. Well, actually his name is Scott, but that’s not quite as superhero-y as Blankbaby.

Scott spend more than four hours last night (yes, that’s what I said, 4+ hours!!!) fixing my broken, yet still beloved, iBook. I think I may know owe him some cookies or my first born or something like that. If he doesn’t finish his NaNoWriMo novel, it may well be my fault.

I prostrate myself on the alter of thanks to you, oh great Blankbaby.

Last Saturday I got a call from my mother. She needed her younger (I’m constantly amazed at how relative age becomes as you get older. For my mom these days younger means 56) brother’s email address in order to send him a happy birthday message. My dad had swapped out her computer in July and managed to delete her address book in the process. Sunday morning I was sitting on the slippery brown leather couch at Mugshots with my computer in my lap, a travel mug full of very hot coffee precariously wedged between my thigh and the arm of the couch, when I remembered her request. I quickly shot off an email to her, with the two email addresses I had for my Uncle Andy in the text of the message.

Only somehow I inadvertently cc-ed him in the email as well. I didn’t realize it until I got an email back from him. It was chatty and friendly, almost picking up as if we had been interrupted in the middle of some previous conversation. After correcting a typo in one of the email addresses I had listed for him, he asked me if I was writing because somehow I had found out that he had discovered my blogging (!) on Friday night. He said that he had been telling a friend our family story of the Divine Tracy Hotel and how it had been sold to Father Divine. He went to google “Father Divine Tracy” and what came up was the blog entry I wrote about that back in August over at the Philly Metroblog. As he read the story over the phone to his friend, he started feeling embarrassed. Was this actually just an urban legend, a story that has entertained scores of children over the years? (Once upon a time, my daddy sold a hotel to Father Divine and was paid in cash…). Who was this person, passing off this story as if it were their own? Then he looked down at the name, and it all made sense.

The email continued to tell me about his birthday, and how basically it had been as shitty as they come. Of course, since he makes his living as a writer, he did so with flair and style. Hopefully, Andy, it can only go up from here. Happy Birthday!

Last month when I went to my college reunion, one of the people I was delighted to see was Katey. We lived in the same residence hall our freshman year, and rapidly became friends in the way you do when you first leave home. After freshman year, when we no longer lived in the same building, we drifted in and out of each others’ social circles, always happy to run into each other crossing Ankeny or in the SUB.

Throughout college, Katey always talked her plans to spend her life writing and these days she’s doing everything she can to make it happen, including adding her voice to the chorus of blogs out here. Only hers is a voice that deserves to rise above the cacophony, to be heard on it’s own. Check her out, I promise, you too will get hooked.