Midwinter Oddities

The three strangest things that happened in my life over the last week:

1. I received a slightly higher raise on my most recent paycheck than my boss had grudgingly told me he would give me. (Both amounts are significantly less than I requested.) It's a nice surprise, but I'm still not convinced it's not a mistake; I'll feel more secure on the 28th.

2. A friend -- I'll call him "D," in the language of the blogosphere -- met someone in London over the weekend who used to work where I work, and she told him she remembers me. Since I don't remember her name or ever having met her, I checked and we never worked there at the same time.

3. After finding one of my slippers in the laundry hamper -- where I must have accidentally tossed it with some dirty clothes -- I told my dog Patsy I owed her an apology for having accused her of hiding it. What's odd is not that I apologized to her but that I apologized a second time the next day because the first time she had been sleeping and, you know, probably hadn't heard me.