Up Fate's Sleeve

I was really looking forward to my return to Atlantic City this weekend; I'm pretty sure I dreamed about it more than once. I learned a few things from my first visit a few months ago, and I was ready to avoid old mistakes and make some new ones. I now know that, while all games are ultimately losing games, slot machines offer the least enjoyment to money spending ratio. I learned not to order mixed drinks that contain every type of alcohol imaginable. I learned that if I'm going to take goofy pictures of myself with some random girl in a bar, I probably should use my own camera and not hers. It would make for a great story if I stumbled on those photos online 20 years from now, though.

As of right now, it probably isn't happening. The friend I was going with has been fighting a cold and has no voice. He's hoping to feel better Saturday morning, so I've held off on ordering any train tickets, but it probably wouldn't be a good idea. It's not as much fun to go if you're under the weather. Also, sitting next to the guy on a train for 3 hours might make me sick too. So it's more than likely this will be postponed, which kind of sucks since I might not have time to go until Autumn. Next weekend I have a dental cleaning early Saturday morning, so theoretically the rest of that weekend would still be free. We'll see.

I'm learning to trust fate a little more after the day I had Thursday. I don't find it difficult to believe God has a plan for me, as He does for all of us. It's just nice to see some positive returns from whatever that plan is for a change. I did make one honest mistake this week and eat meat for lunch on Friday, forgetting that it's Lent. The first Friday after Ash Wednesday is always a tough one to remember, especially since it's only two days after another no-meat day. Late in the afternoon, as the roast beef and bacon rumbled in my stomach, I suddenly realized my oversight. It was an honest mistake, and honestly I've done worse. I may well have done worse this weekend had I gone on that trip, at the very least missing a mass.

I drove home Friday night exhausted after a long week and thinking about the strange events. The week began with a holiday and a snowstorm, ended with big changes at my current and former companies, and on Friday I also stumbled upon an anti-geese system. Walking back to my office after lunch, I heard the frantic cries of an entire flock. I saw nothing. I looked around, then up at my building. Were they on the roof? “It sounds...electronic almost...” noted one of my friends. It was then that I spotted the two pairs of speakers mounted on the roof's edge. At last I knew why there was a maintenance guy walking around up there the other morning. I can only guess there are motion sensors, which triggers the recorded sound of geese in distress, which tells the real geese to vamoose, which humanely keeps them off our lawn. It's not too shabby.

So, with all this on my mind during my last commute home, it was a miracle I spotted the dark shape in the road and slowed down. As my headlights illuminated it, I saw stripes of black and brown as the frozen creature was spurred in to movement once more, and finished crossing to safety. And, not ten feet later, concealed in some underbrush with all its lights out, sat a police car. Now, chances are I wasn't speeding, or if I was I was only 5 or 10 miles above the limit. Still, when I consider the odds that, on a section of the road where there was no light, I spotted an animal that made me slow down before reaching a hidden cop? That just blows my mind.

I don't know what's going on with fate lately, any more than I usually do. Maybe it's best that I don't make it to AC this weekend, or maybe things will work out and I'll go anyway. Maybe something great will happen there, or maybe something great will happen as a result of me staying home. I never know what fate has up its sleeve, but for once I'm looking forward to finding out....