I have always been intrigued by happenstance.

    My spousal unit and I met because our roommates at university were lovers. If Mike and Mindy hadn't fallen in love, I probably would not have met Paul. We were very different people, none of our other school friendships overlapped, we were not in any of the same classes.

    Happenstance, pure happenstance.

    There is a theory of sorts called six degrees of separation and the idea of it is that most of us can find a link to anyone else on the planet through a chain of six acquaintances.

    I was joking about it one night with an Aussie guy I've been chatting with for a few years, an interesting man who lives in Sydney. In real life we would never have met, and yet we could link ourselves in under six degrees of separation because he and his wife had hosted a girl from Boston through an exchange program.

    It turned out that this girl had gone skiing up at the local ski center near where I live back when Paul's brother Mike had worked several winters helping get folks on the lifts. So there was our six degrees of separation--my friend, his guest, Paul's brother and me. From Sydney to a tiny log cabin off in the woods of Quebec and all it took was two people.

    There's a diary project to see how many degrees of separation exist out in the world of on-line diaries. The one, the only Lone Ranger mentioned it over at her blog, that's the bit of happenstance that helped me stumble into the project.

    The project itself is over at Mockerybird Lists and if you scroll down to the bottom, you'll see where to e-mail your links list if you want to participate.

    My chronics, the diaries I read daily, have been added to the list.

    By happenstance, of course.