These stories are all apropos of nothing.  I offer them merely for the sort of entertainment one gains from truly random things.

1.1  How I learned coincidences that span the globe are just like other coincidences.

So, it happened like this.  It was my senior year of college, and someone in my belly-dance class had invited me to tag along to a hafla, which is just Arabic for ‘party’ and was pretty much just a group of other college students who enjoyed an arab and/or otherwise non-Western aesthetic hanging out and eating things like baklava and socializing.  It was pretty low-key, and perfectly lovely, and I ended up chatting for a bit with the hostess, whose name I can no longer quite recall but who I’ll call ‘Heather’ for this.  Heather was the sort of person you can have a nice chat with without necessarily talking about anything in particular, and I was generally pleased to have gone without necessarily planning to attend anything like that again.

A week or two later was Spring Break, and that year I was actually going somewhere, which was to visit my old roommate, Jessica, who was doing a year of study-abroad in Tokyo.  I flew over there and we had a blast that week+, going shopping and to various different restaurants, visiting cultural sites and gardens, and attending a couple rock concerts.  One of the outings Jessica planned for us was to visit a particular bridge, which on (I believe) Sundays was a gathering spot for folks who like to do cosplay.  We weren’t planning on dressing up, but we hoped to see some cool costumes, and maybe get a cool photo or two.

(Aside: There was one guy who wanted a picture of us despite our not-dressed-up state, and this seemed to be related to the fact that we were both blue-eyed foreigners.  Rather than ‘smile!’, he kept saying ‘big eyes!’ before snapping a picture (really those pictures must have looked bizarre).  I was glad that at least Jessica spoke enough Japanese to be able to ask him what he thought he was up to before we said ‘Sure?’)

Anyway, who should we meet at the bridge, but Heather from the hafla a couple weeks back.  Neither of us had known the other was flying to Japan for spring break.  And the friends we had in common via Japan stuff were like 3^rd-degree-of-separation at best.  But, we were both there on that bridge, on the same day, halfway around the world from where we’d seen each other last, randomly thrown together again.  We all chatted together for about five minutes and then went our separate ways.

And I don’t think I’ve seen Heather since.  It was just a really random coincidence facilitated by small number social statistics when you attend the same school as someone else.  The end.

1.2  How I learned the Shrike is not just a science-fictional monster who travels through time.

Okay, so when I first moved to Colorado for grad-school, I made a new friend who insisted I needed to read this sci-fi novel called, Hyperion by Dan Simmons.  It is a pretty great book, the first of either a duology or a 4-book series depending on how you want to count things, with a structure based around the Canterbury Tales, and also time-travel.  The main monster is called The Shrike and is this time-traveling alien who is huge and covered in black spikes and, if he catches you, he impales you either on himself or on this big spiky black tree thing, but you don’t die, you just get dragged along on his time-traveling weirdness (feeling like you’re dying).  (Really, it’s a really cool book; it’s just been a long time since I’ve read it.)

Fast-forward a bit to after I’ve finished grad-school and my husband and I always carpool to work, him dropping me off to have a nice walk along the creek-path for about the last quarter-mile to my building.  It was a winter-ish season because the trees were bare, but it was also pretty sunny and dry, because it’s the Colorado Frontrange.  I was walking along, past a scraggly bare tree and, just as I passed, I noticed that, barely held in the twigs of a branch sticking out right at about shoulder level, there was a dead rodent of some kind, upside down, its very pink feet sticking up in the air and no obvious sign how it ended up hanging there, dead, in a tree.  I didn’t stop to examine it; I was too startled to find a dead rodent nearly in my face, and really only caught a glimpse.

But, I mentioned it in an online writing forum when the discussion had turned to random details one can include in writing, and one of the moderators, David Coe, who is also an avid bird-watcher, said ‘Maybe it was a shrike!?’.  ‘What?’ said I.  ‘Aren’t shrikes science-fictional time-traveling monsters?’

No, actually it turns out that shrikes are a type of bird that catches their prey and then impales it on a thorn or a stick or somewhere to hang out and rot for a little bit before they eat it.  Mostly they do this with things like semi-toxic grasshoppers to let the toxins decay and become less harmful.  But apparently some will do it with things like lizards?

I have to admit, I have my doubts that there was a shrike big enough to catch field rats hanging out in Colorado in the middle of winter.  But, I did get to learn that the world of birds is more interesting than I had previously appreciated.

1.3  How I learned my future husband lived across the hall from me.

This is a favorite story, because one always likes to have a great story about how they met their spouse, right?

So, it was my first year in grad school, and I was living in a new place and mostly pretty excited, but also a little bummed about a couple of things, such as no longer being able to take dance lessons from the teacher I’d studied with for seven years back in Montana.  Then there’s an email sent out to the Colorado grad-student email list that there’s a group that meets on campus for lessons in Tango.  That sounds intriguing, and probably fun.  Also, I really suck at meeting people (guys), and this seems like probably an opportunity I should at least try out.  I make myself go to one of the classes because it would obviously be stupid not to and I would be really annoyed with myself if I didn’t go.

And, I am definitely still socially-awkward me when I get there.  But, since it’s a dance class I still get to dance with people, so yay for that.  I don’t know how to connect with anybody there, but there is one really gorgeous guy in the class who a) obviously knows what he’s doing dance-wise and isn’t just shuffling around like most of the guys there, and b) actually comes up and talks to me.  And then he goes away shortly afterward.  (He likes the tell the story saying that I wouldn’t talk to him; but I was actually super-thrilled he was talking to me; I just had zero idea, at that point, how to talk to people in a such a way as might convey that fact.)

A bit later, the tango group is planning an outing to head to a more professional class at some place called The Merc(https://www.mercurycafe.com/), and if anybody needs a ride, they should show up to the usual spot and rides will be offered.  Again, I make myself go, even though I don’t actually know where we’re going (hint: Denver, 30 miles away!), and the really gorgeous guy is there as one of the people offering a ride!  I make sure that the ride I get is from him (go me).

And yes, it turns out that he’s awesome to chat with and awesome to dance with, and on the highway heading out of town, we pass the turn-off to my neighborhood, which I point to and say that I live back that way to give him an idea where to drop me home later.

That neighborhood is actually in a slightly tricky place to get to, roads-and-exit-ramps-wise, but later that night he’s driving me home and heads straight there.  I point to the next turn to take, and then to the building my apartment’s in.  But, before we get close enough for him to drop me off, he blurts, ‘You don’t live on the 3^rd floor, do you?’  Because at that point he’s actually really nervous.  Because that’s the building he lives in; and he’s realized he’s basically going to be following me into the building; and he’d really rather not make it seem like he’s stalking me all the way home.

But, of course, I do live on the 3^rd floor.  Actually, if my apartment was shifted over by just one door, then we would live directly across from each other.  (And all summer he’d been wondering who the new person was who kept ordering things from amazon and then leaving them on their doorstep for a really long time.)  (Slightly later, I find out we work in the same building, too…)

Which is all super useful, because I still at that point suck at talking to people, and definitely suck at getting up the nerve to talk to guys, and if he hadn’t been right there who knows what would’ve happened.  But instead it all turned out perfectly.