(dis)connected

On Monday (I had the day off for Presidents Day, God bless America!) I took a quick glance at Facebook and saw some fun pictures of a good friend, Alex Rae, at her bridal shower (so many friends are getting married! Man. Doesn't the Bible say something about this? "You will hear of wars and rumors of wars and all your friends will get married and forget about you, but don't be alarmed. Such things must happen"?). The shower was on Sunday, which I knew cuz another good friend, Kaeli, went and couldn't hang out with "the boys" after church. =( (Secret: we didn't miss her that much. =P Pizza and... stuff... are maaarvelous distractions.)

I was just clicking away from the pictures when something caught my eye. The little newsfeed line about Alex said, "tagged in [so and so's] album." That name seemed really familiar, but I couldn't place it right away. I thought, of course it's familiar, I see names of friends' friends on here all the time. But I didn't quite think that was it.

I clicked on the name and it was suddenly clear (pictures are helpful like that). This girl, one of my friend's friends from when they were little kids... is one of my coworkers!

(Okay, okay. So we missed you, Kaeli. A lot. =)

That's why that name looks familiar! I see her emails every day! I see her every day! We work in different departments, but we knew who each other were and had talked before when we needed to adjust meeting schedules or whatnot. But it's weird to think how easily so much time can go by without two people in close quarters knowing they have a really good mutual friend.

And then it got cooler. We talked on Tuesday (first day of the work week, God bless America!) and she said, "Yeah and I talked to your other friend too!" Think, think, think. "Oh, Kaeli?!" "Yeah!"

Kaeli asked her at the shower what she does for work and she said she's a VFX coordinator. Kaeli said, "Oh, one of my friends is a visual effects coordinator! Where do you work?" My coworker told me she thought something like, there're lots of VFX places - no chance. "Zoic Studios."

Haha, how cool, right?! Alex and my coworker have been friends for years and years. She went to the church I grew up going to! And we realized at work the other day that we must've been at a bunch of the same parties and gatherings at Alex's house over the years and just not recognized each other when we both ended up at Zoic! Haha, "and the awesome pizza's her dad always makes on the barbecue?!" "YES!!" She thinks she may even have pictures from some of the parties with me in them. =P

Life is fun, ya know? So many paths crossing and crisscrossing back and forth! Oh man, I just remembered another one!!! When I road-tripped to Telluride, CO for Thanksgiving this last year I stopped in Zion in Utah on my way back to California. (That's actually prolly worth sharing some pictures from. Maybe I'll do that later.) It was early morning in the canyon and I stopped to chat with a some guys who were capturing awesome time-lapse footage of the sunrise over the mountains with a cool mechanical camera rig. We talked for a few minutes about where we'd been traveling (they'd just spent the night camping in the freezing cold, if I remember correctly) and about their setup, which made them curious how I was familiar with their gear and fluent in their lingo. Turned out one of the guys went to art school with and is good buddies of a VFX artist I was working with at Zoic at the time!

The point (or thought, maybe) is, I feel like we could have these kinds of encounters more often and discover more of these connections that surely exist and move around us without our knowledge if we were more awake to life or the Spirit (kinda the same thing?). I wanna be connected (big life picture, not career path or goal wise). I want my interactions with people to mean something and be memorable, to them and to me! To hint that there's a larger story going on around us and that we're part of it!

I'm inviting you, God, to show me more of the crisscrosses I've been oblivious to... cuz I think you like it. =) I know I do.