A Record?

I have said plenty of times that I walk a lot and that many friends live in my neighborhood. I believe I have already connected the two points to observe that I often encounter those friends by coincidence while engaged in my own business. It is always delightful and sometimes an inconvenient annoyance. As often as these encounters happen, they seldom crop up much in a narrow window of time. Sometimes they do, though.

I recently had one of those times. This will be one of those things that is of interest to no one but me, but I imagine there is little risk for this blog in pandering to that very specific demographic. What happened is that when I left the apartment to visit the library (an excursion you will recall from yesterday), I bumped into a neighbor with whom I'm acquainted. There is naturally no surprise in a surprise meeting with a neighbor, so I saw nothing in that. On I went with my day.

Following my thwarted attempt to visit my local lending library, I headed off to the subway station and went down to Hollywood. On exiting that station, I found myself by another friend, who had been biking at the very park where the library was. He and I compared notes on that film shoot, and then he and I (like the neighbor and I) parted ways. I already found it rather interesting that two such incidents should happen in well under an hour. Naturally that was not to be all.

After finishing my business at the library in Hollywood, I decided that I ought to go pick up some things at the grocery store. I walked east along the road linking the store to the neighborhood's main north and south artery as I had plenty of times, only this time was made remarkable by my brush with two more friends in my circle of improv comedy acquaintances. I spoke at length with them, and could have spent several times without giving a thought to breaking it off. That's the extent of it. I figure that in three hours I had unplanned run-ins with four different friends. That's really something for me, although I concede others may be used to more of that.