Serendipity

ser·en·dip·i·ty  noun\ˌser-ən-ˈdi-pə-tē\ : The occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way

It's widely agreed among people that know me that I have a gift for meeting famous people.

Not A-list movie stars or anything like that (though my boss's son does know Leo DiCaprio, so we're practically besties).  No, it's mostly just quasi-famous people -- people that are celebrities to me but you won't likely see them making headlines on E! News.  Most "famous" people I've met are favorite bands of mine.  I've had the opportunity of meeting many of them over the past five years given my location and concert habit.  "You're so lucky! You have a magic power of meeting famous people!"  No, I reply, I'm just patient and I know where the stage door is and I've probably crossed the line between being a fan and being slightly creepy once or twice.  Anyone can do it if they don't mind freezing nearly to death.  It's not luck; it's planning and knowing where to be and when and being there. (And okay, and living in Chicago helps a lot.)

But it's the unplanned happenings that are the best.  Once in a while the stars align and I'm in the right place at the right time in the right situation, led by a series of seemingly random events.  Often it's probably something I don't notice at the time, like capturing an interesting photo or meeting a lifelong friend or catching a bus at just the right time or even being born white in middle-class America.  But meeting famous people is a good example of this and for some reason it's happened to me a lot.

#1

I think the first time this happened was in 2010, in Las Vegas.  I was eating breakfast with family at the cafe at the Hard Rock Hotel.  That place is a sort of mecca for me - there is amazing rock memorabilia everywhere.  Anyway, as I was sitting there I looked up to the front of the restaurant and noticed an older Hispanic man who was about to be seated, with long curly dark hair, wearing a hat and a Bob Marley t-shirt.  He looked familiar, though I'd never met him before.  I suddenly realized that this man was Carlos Santana, one of the greatest guitarists to ever live, Woodstock performer and all-around legend.  I quietly mentioned this to my family and after some pushing, they convinced me to go up to him for his autograph.  He couldn't have been nicer and he took a picture with me and my cousins.  If we hadn't decided to eat breakfast at the restaurant at that time, if we weren't in Vegas in the first place, that would never have happened.

Just chilling with our pal Carlos.

#2

The first time in our lives we'd been in Europe, two of our favorite actors - David Tennant and Catherine Tate, stars of Doctor Who, among other things - were starring in a Shakespeare play in London, the city of my dreams.  For once we didn't have to curse the Atlantic Ocean keeping us away from something so fantastic.  Chelsea's serendipitous moment came in the form of magically securing tickets for us to the first night of this near sold-out show, and close to the stage to boot.  That night I shared an unforgettable experience with two of my best friends, seeing these actors perform their craft brilliantly and even getting their autographs afterwards.  If we hadn't all chosen that semester to study abroad, and those places, and [insert ticket magic here because I still don't understand], this would have been yet another thing we sighed about missing.

It could have ended there and we'd have been more than happy.  But this was London.

The next day would be our last full day in London, and Abby and I wanted to see a show at the Globe Theatre.  We looked up tickets for that day's play and were dismayed to see it had sold out.  But we wanted to make the best of our time and asked Chelsea to lead us to the Globe anyway, so we could at least see it.  To make a long story short, we walked in the wrong entrance to the theater grounds, saw a man who looked quite a bit like Rory from Doctor Who, and ended up meeting our third major Doctor Who actor in two days, Arthur Darvill.  A series of wrong turns and seemingly missed opportunities was responsible for our incredulity-produced inability to form complete sentences for the next few hours as well as a crazy-awesome picture and memory.

Calm outside. FREAKING OUT inside.

#3

Today the universe smiled upon me again.  It was after work and I was on the 22 bus.  Normally I take another bus home, but I was pet-sitting for my friend Marianne and was going to her apartment first.  I managed to squeeze on to an incredibly packed bus.  I was pressed to the front of the bus, looking directly out the huge front window.  Usually on the bus I have a book out or I'm scrolling through social media phone apps, but I needed to hold on and my bag was trapped at my feet besides.  I settled for enjoying the view.  When the bus stopped at Huron and opened its doors, I stayed where I expected to stay for the next 20 minutes.  It was a red light, which gave me time to notice a girl in a hoodie crossing the street in front of the bus, carrying a paper grocery bag.  I recognized her immediately as Hannah Hart, the host of YouTube's My Drunk Kitchen, which Abby and I watched (and often reenacted) religiously during our last year of college.  I'd been following Hannah's tour of the US on Instagram and I knew she'd been in Chicago the last few days, but I was sure she'd moved on by now and had accepted that I'd missed her.  I immediately hopped off the bus, unwilling to let the opportunity of meeting one of my favorite internet stars go by.  I called her name and introduced myself.  She was incredibly friendly and even took a picture of us with my phone.  We parted ways, she to shoot an episode of Kitchen about hot dogs with the groceries she was carrying, and I to smile ridiculously to myself at the bus stop.

Note Hannah's mad selfie skills on the first try.

I think what I've learned is that really cool things can happen when you break from your routine.  When you haven't planned exactly where and when to be.  When plans fall apart or you walk down a different street or make an arbitrary decision.  This series of unexpected events could be leading up to something potentially incredible.  I'm not a particularly religious person, but I do believe that sometimes things are meant to happen, whether you call it fate, divine intervention, luck, or serendipity.

Sun Sun Sun

This spring has not been a spring so far.  It's been more like a long, cloudy, miserable winter that's lasted for seven months (though some states like Colorado are still getting snow and that is just not okay).

I was beginning to forget what it was like to feel the sun on my face and had actually started wishing for the blazing heat of July.  That's how UV-deprived I was.  So last Tuesday, when Chicago cranked the heat up to 80 degrees it felt like the first day of summer vacation from school and I'm pretty sure the birds were singing this song:

Tuesday morning I prepared, half-awake, for the glorious day ahead.  I pulled a sundress out of hiding, ignored my tights in favor of bare, ghostly pale legs, and made sure to grab my camera and check that it was charged for the lunch-break-long summer photo adventure downtown I had planned.  When noon came, I burst out of the office, camera around my neck.  I came to the L underpass at Lake and State, framed a great shot of the shadows on the metalwork, and clicked.

Nothing.  Why? I asked myself.  It's charged!  The lens cap is off!  What's going on?  Oh.

No memory card.

I thought longingly of the little blue rectangle, lonely in my dark apartment, still stuck in my sleeping laptop.  I mourned the loss of opportunity for a moment, and even considered buying a cheap, low-memory card just to get me through the hour.  Luckily I quickly realized that my bank account would be disappointed in me if I spent an unnecessary $12.  I came to my senses, threw my shoulders back, and tapped the camera icon on my phone.  Was I too good for Instagram? No. No I was not.

Looking north on Dearborn Street Bridge

I suppose the sun took pity on me and my absentmindedness, because Wednesday was just as beautifully warm.  I reunited my memory card with its true Nikon love, and together they went on a romantic tour of the Chicago river between State and Wells.

Days like this seem so rare that sometimes you just have to take advantage of it, especially in Chicago because you know that the next day could drop 40 degrees (which it did).  I'd scheduled a badly-needed haircut for that day, but I called and rescheduled it in favor of going jogging with friends.  And actually, yesterday was the first time I didn't feel at all like death since I started jogging about 2 weeks ago.  Good decisions all around, really.

Earlier in the day I discovered that my friend Amanda has been working two blocks away from me since February, so she joined me for part of the time.  I'm starting to suspect that I know many people that work near me and I just don't know it.  Well, it is the Loop, so the odds of this are pretty good.  I guess none of them go to the Au Bon Pain I've planted myself in every day of this year's ice age.

Hopefully I got enough Vitamin D in these past few days to last me for a while.  Because it seems, looking at the next 7 days, I'm going to have to learn to take good rainy pictures without ruining my camera.