Serendipity

Sorry it's been several days between posts, but I had an opportunity to make some very sweet lemonade out of some lemons I was handed last Thursday.

I was really looking forward to talking with the Gryffindor Book Group about Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne, but nobody showed up. Not one person! It's possible that Verne was just too intimidating, even for folks who said they wanted to read him. There is quite a lot of science in his science fiction--he's obviously fascinated with the potential uses of electricity, for example, and he explains exactly how to calculate the amount of pressure exerted on a submarine as it descends underwater. (Interesting stuff, but a little of this goes a long way.)

I also wonder if Thursday night is just not a good time for our teen and tween readers. We'll still plan to meet at 7 p.m. on August 9 to talk about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (5 days to book release--hurray!), but we'll consider changing the day and time for future meetings. If you're in the Denton area and you'd like to join us, please leave a comment about what days and times you'd prefer to meet!

Anyway, I was talking about these issues with Thom Anderson, the friendly Community Relations Manager at the Barnes & Noble store where our group meets, when a man came over and asked if he could sit with us. There was no point in saving chairs for people who weren't coming, so I said sure. It turns out that this gentleman is the managing editor of the Gainesville Daily Register and after we'd talked for a while, he invited me to submit a review of the newest Harry Potter movie. Of course, I said yes! I spent Friday beefing up the preliminary review I'd written for this blog (July 11, 2007), and this morning I drove 30 miles to Gainesville to pick up several copies of the Daily Register. Hurray! (If my review becomes available online, I'll be sure to add a link to it.)

So that's my serendipity for this week. Although I'm still disappointed that the Gryffindors didn't get to discuss Jules Verne, if even one person had shown up for the meeting, I wouldn't have talked with Mr. Osborne or gotten to publish a movie review in his paper.

Have you had a serendipity this week? If so, leave a comment and tell us about it. Be sure to look for serendipity in your own life in the coming week. I bet you'll find it!