I want to know about how serendipity plays in your life. Serendipity, of course, means happy surprise and even a fortunate mistake. This past Friday serendipity was at play in the most pleasant and surprising way.
First I need to tell you that smileycreek is "The Director of Serendipity." It says so right on her dwindling number of business cards. This is an important bit of information because truly serendipity happens around here all the time...so much so it's expected. This is what happened.
Sidepocket and Ms. sidepocket were driving with their grandson from their daughter's home in Quincy, CA to their home in Sebastopol, CA. Their journey takes them within a mere 15 minute side trip to where we live in Paradise, CA. We've invited them to drop by anytime they're driving past and last Friday it finally happened.
They arrived at our home at around 1:45 PM. I waited for them so I could say "hi" as I had to then immediately leave for my office in Chico, CA. I wish I could have stayed and visited with them, but smileycreek did and had a splendid time.
WELL, it turns out while up near Quincy, they'd taken a hike around Buck's Lake. While traipsing around the lake they came across a lost cell phone that had been placed on top of a large granite boulder. Sidepocket picked it up and checked it out. He was able to contact the owner who lived in Chico, which is about a 20 minute drive from Paradise.
Since they were coming to Paradise, they'd plan to meet with the phone's owner in Paradise at the Ace Hardware Store, which is at the junction of two of the main streets in Paradise (we literally have only 6 main streets). As it turns out Ace Hardware store is very close to where we live.
After some communication with smileycreek, it was discovered that the owner of the phone was Norma L...a patient of mine. Norma had been camping at Buck's Lake and while squatting down to take a pee lost her cell phone...something she didn't discover until she got home. We kept the lost cell phone and Norma came to our home the next day to retrieve it.
How's that for serendipity!?
Easy Peasy....here is all it took to happen:
1) smileycreek discovers DailyKos in early 2008.
2) she starts reading diaries and learns about an amazing gathering of the closest group of Kossacks near us...the SFKossacks
3) she comments that she sure wished she could have been at that gathering in Sebastopol at a person's lovely farm. That person went by sidepocket on DailyKos
4) a person who goes by navajo on DailyKos said we were welcome to join them at their next gathering.
5) we did just that and also attend NN10 that year.
6) I have a new patient to my practice roughly about four months ago. She is Norma L. who only recently moved to Chico to be near one of her kids after teaching pottery making at primarily Foothill Community College and also a few years at Cabrillo Community College in Aptos, CA. Smileycreek and I lived in Santa Cruz, CA...right next door to Aptos...for years. Norma L and I hit it off great partly due to being able to talk about things we have in common.
7) smileycreek and I become good friends with the SFKossacks. Only GTP is weird. The rest are great.
8) a chance hike by sidepocket and his family results in a lost phone being found
9) that phone belongs to Norma L. who retrieves it from our home after the sidepocket's leave it here with us.
As I see things, this was a very direct and straight line of serendipity which reunited Norma L. and her lost cell phone.
Norma was just amazed. I told her, "well, I'm an Acupunturist. We're all about getting Qi to flow unimpeded so the normal balance of things can happen." We both laughed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
definition of granfalloon: a "false karass." That is, it is a group of people who outwardly choose or claim to have a shared identity or purpose, but whose mutual association is actually meaningless. This is part of the fictional religion of Bokononism (created by Kurt Vonnegut in his 1963 novel Cat's Cradle).
As Bokonon himself stated, "If you wish to examine a granfalloon, just remove the skin of a toy balloon."
They'd found a can of white paint, and on the front doors of the cab Frank had painted white stars, and on the roof he had painted the letters of a granfalloon: U.S.A.
Welcome or welcome back to Kitchen Table Kibitzing, a community series that posts nightly at 8:00 Eastern. remembrance and nomandates came up with the idea for this series during Netroots Nation 13.
As we envision it, KTK is a community for those who wish to share part of their evening around a virtual kitchen table with kossacks who are caring and supportive of one another. So bring your stories, jokes, photos, funny pics, music, interesting videos (hey, palantir!), and so forth. We would also appreciate links—including quotations—to diaries, news stories, and books that you think this community would appreciate.
Please note that pie fights will be unwelcome in this community, just as in most other series at DKos. There's lots of space at the rest of the site for fighting with other Democrats, progressives, and liberals, and we don't want those battles dragged into this series.
Finally, readers may notice that most who are posting diaries and comments in this series already know one another to some degree, but that definitely does not mean that newcomers will be excluded or unwelcome. We're happy to welcome guests to our kitchen table, and hope to make some new friends as well.