But what I really need is...

The weirdest thing happened to me today. I was standing in the Safeway checkout line, paying for my groceries, when the clerk tells me, with surprise in her voice, "You've just won an iPod Shuffle!" Truth to tell, she was more excited about it than I was. As for me, I was skeptical. I was thinking, "Yeah, right, I've probably won some stupid little plastic accessory for a piece of equipment I haven't got!" So I went over and stood in line at customer service. Sure enough, they hand me an honest-to-goodness real iPod. Imagine that.

So I find myself thinking about luck and strange coincidences. What is luck? Is it really random? Or does it result from a series of finite events that may have an infinite variety of combinations? Is it reproducible? I am reminded of a character from Nilo Cruz's play Anna in the Tropics. The man has a gambling problem, and we find through the course of the play that once he won big--really big--and ever since then he has been trying to reproduce the actions of that day in order to win again. He gets up at the same time every day, on the same side of the bed. He puts his shoes on in the same order. And so on. But he still doesn't win.

I don't know if I could reproduce this day if I tried. I don't remember in what order I put my shoes on or what time I left the house. I am wearing my bright apple green hippie shirt. Today is not my son's birthday, but it is the day we are celebrating his birthday, so most of the shopping items were for his party. Minutes before I checked out "The Boy from Ipanema"--not "The Girl from Ipanema" which is the alternate version of the song--was playing on the store's speakers. This is significant because I had just referenced this song in a text message to a friend on Friday--the "Boy" version, not the "Girl" version. What are the odds? I received a phone call from my friend Gina while I was at the store. I used a $10 gift card, which I received at Christmas, and a 10% off card, which I received in the mail this week, when I paid for my purchases. My total came up to $60.06. I was at checkstand 3. Or was it 4? Both the clerk and the bagger were two young female employees I had never seen before. The list just goes on and on. See? Finite series of events; infinite variety of combinations.

There's some irony here, too. I'm planning a trip this summer, and I've really been wanting to get a digital camera. Hmm. Small electronic device about the same size and shape as an iPod. Ask the universe for a digital camera, it gives me an iPod. Go figure. Sometimes I think the universe is terribly lacking in fine tuning.

However, I am not complaining, because an iPod will come in handy. Not only will it make it easier to listen to all my favorite music, but just this week my friend Guy invited me to join his band Shadow Opera. This will help me with practicing the songs I need to learn for the band. I am really excited to be singing again and am really happy to be working with this incredibly talented group of people. I will keep you posted as things develop.

So, yeah, winning an iPod is very cool indeed.

But you know, what I really need is a droid that understands the binary language of moisture vaporators...