From the pages of ‘stranger than fiction, good enough to be true, wowie zowie, hold on to your hats’… I was delighted that my friend Jewelee Landis was in from South Florida with her two beautiful little girls, Sabrina and Vanessa. I was looking for something for us to do that the kids would enjoy too. An inspiration came to me :  Concerts Under the Stars in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania where I had attended musical delights over the years. Great out door venue, room to play, and they sometimes have kid’s performers. What I found was even better than that!  Grammy Award winning Terrance Simien and the Zydeco Experience was the perfect fit since I happen to know that Jewelee loves all things NOLA and that she and her family go to Jazz Fest every year.

SO, I get there before they arrive, set up a big blanket right near the stage and then wait. Shortly before they show up, I turn around and a man behind me asks if my last name is Weinstein. I smile and then laugh when I realize who it is. His name is Chris and I had met him the previous weekend while at the XPoNential Music Festival, sitting with my cousin Jody Rosenblum and my friend Gary Schoenberg. He happened to be sitting behind me then too. I had noticed that he had a pin on his backpack that said FREE HUGS. Since I’m all about that, I gladly offered one and we had run into each other several times over that weekend. Last night, I invited him to sit with me and told him I was waiting for a friend. He said ” I know. It’s Jewelee Landis and our friend Virginia.” I asked how he knew her. It turns out that the 3 of them are flight attendants for USAir and he had seen on Jewelee’s Facebook page that she and I were planning to hang out together. When Jewelee, Virginia and the girls arrived, we all laughed at the cosmic joke. But wait, it gets even better(:  Chris asked where the shaker egg was that he had given me last weekend in exchange for bubbles I had given him. I pulled it out of my backpack and Jewelee smiled again, since she had given Chris that egg!  What are the chances that not only would Chris and I happen to be sitting in the same position at musical events two weekends in a row, that we would have this friend in common who was visting his home base who had passed on a gift that she had initially given him? Only 100% apparently!

A few more cosmically coincidental happenings in the past few days:

I am increasingly aware that the Universe is REALLY listening in to my conversations. On Saturday and then again today, I was speaking about a friend named Kalie Marino whose book Critical Addiction is in the editing stages. She has had a major life event/loss occur and transpired when it was near completion. This was part of the topic of the conversations with our mutual friends. Less than 30 minutes after speaking with my friend David DiPasquale about her, drum roll please….she called to discuss the book since I wrote the foreword and my editor is also now her editor.