i'm out of titles

yesterday, i get off the plane in oakland and meet a grad student in berkeley's education department, and we strike up conversation and exchange numbers and then i get on AirBART only to discover that i don't have exact change, so i get off and ask a man where the change machine is, and instead the guy just GIVES me 2 dollars, at which point i say thank you and umm, because i am ever so smooth, and he says no problem and boards his bus. i then return to the AirBART stop where, after a short while, an older gentleman approaches to ask if he needs exact change, and i reply yes, absolutely you do, but he finds exact change, so crisis averted, and he keeps talking to me, and i end up telling him about folklore, and he ends up sitting next to me for the length of the bus ride. at our stop, he gives me his card and says, "i've never met anyone who does what you do. drop me an email and tell me how you are." and i say that i will and privately wonder if it's customary to have met as many people as i've met in the last hour before dragging my suitcase off the bus and onto the BART platform where i get a phone call from a friend who wants to go salsa dancing. so instead of going home i BART to the station closest to his house and he gives me a ride home and then to the club.

the conclusion to this stream of "and then's" is that i was dancing within 30 minutes of getting into Berkeley. i take that as a good omen.