The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy says that if you hold a lungful of air you can survive in the total vacuum of space for about thirty seconds. However, it does go on to say that what with space being the mind-boggling size it is the changes of getting picked up by another ship within those thirty seconds are two to the power of two hundred and seventy-six thousand, seven hundred and nine to one against.

By a totally staggering coincidence, that is also the telephone number of an Islington flat where Arthur once went to a very good party and met a very nice girl whom he totally failed to get off with -- she went off with a gate-crasher.

Though the planet Earth, the Islington flat and the telephone have all now been demolished, it is comforting to reflect that they are all in some small way commemorated by the fact that twenty-nine seconds later Ford and Arthur were rescued.

Now that my life is all up in the air, I keep searching for coincidences like this, to see if they will give some sense and meaning to my choices and make me more sure that I am doing the right thing. As I was visiting graduate schools I became increasingly stressed out trying to see into the future and figure out where I was supposed to be. Colgate turned out to be exactly the "right" choice... I fit there so well and met so many amazing people and did so many wonderful things. But what if I made the wrong choice on this next step? There were no signs to tell me the future or show me the way. I guess you never really know for sure -- you'll never know what you would have experienced some other way.

But the same sort of second-guessing has permeated my apartment-hunting as well, and coincidences are too plentiful for their own good. "Here's an interesting little notion. Did you realize that most people's lives are governed by telephone numbers?" asks the computer in Hitchhiker's Guide. If that's so, then clearly I'm meant to be in the apartment where the last four digits of one roommate's phone number are identical to the last four digits of the number I had in '34 House (with the most wonderful roommates ever.) But what if it's not phone numbers, it's birthdays? Perhaps I should be in the apartment with the girl who was born the day after me. Or perhaps names are the connecting factor. Should I go with the apartment where the dog is named Jezebel? It's not a very common name for a dog -- and yet, it is the same name that my uncle's dog had -- probably the first dog I can remember knowing.

I tie my brain in knots fussing over these ridiculous superstitions, and I know it won't get me anywhere, but how else do you cope with the unknown? It's just too much pressure trying to get my life to work out right again in the face of all these new challenges and decisions, after spending four years somewhere where my life was really just right, after all.