Coincidence

Coincidences freak me out. Today, for instance, Georgia and Jack left to go meet their aunt at the Georgia Aquarium a little after 11 a.m. About an hour and a half later, I went in to school for a while, to help Hank with a presentation he's giving tomorrow. Biggy and I had a date to play racqetball at 4:00, which gave me two hours plus before I had to head back to the burbs to my neighborhood Y.

When I got to school, Hank was sitting at the "big table," the one you see pictured so often in this blog, with a group of students who'd met there to discuss a project. Hank was deep in the conversation, so there was nothing for me to do but have a seat and learn something. As usual, then, it was an hour at least before we finally got down to the business of the presentation. Unfortunately, he didn't like any of the images I'd chosen to complement certain points. For example, Car Trouble, which was DENIED:



His nixing it sparked my soapbox spiel about see/say imagery and how I refuse to find images that simply and literally illustrate, followed by a little diatribe about how I guess I overestimate people's ability to make connections, which, evidently, isn't nearly as strong as my own... and Hank proceeded to point out that my choices of visuals for "Guts" were indeed see/say, and gross at that:



Well, I argued, it was just so disgusting I thought it would help make his point more memorable. But, granted, it might not set the proper tone, so I offered up an alternative, which was also DENIED:



Before I could decide my next point/counterpoint, an alum from about five years back stopped by with with his wife and father to say hello to Hank, and right after that, recent grad John F. entered the office, chatting non-stop because he's never not. All of this to say it was quite the interrupted back-and-forth, trying to come to some agreement on these visuals and running out of time. Hank finally won, landing on a typographical solution to the problem, which meant my work was done, since I know as much about kerning as I do about astrophysics.

It was 3:40 when I got back in the Beetle, which meant I was going to be 10 or 15 minutes late for getting my ass kicked on the court.

Near home, on the 120 Loop, I got stopped at a red light. Right behind Georgia and Jack! If any one of the things I just told you about had not happened--or had happened differently, that would never have happened.

Freaky.