I have had a lot of "close misses" and one quality close hit.

I was in the Pentagon on September 11th, my first day back from knee surgery. I got trumped by a senior officer for a conference room for my 0900 briefing; good thing, it was much closer to the impact path than the smaller space I got, and he carried about 6 people out of there. I was unharmed, just got dusty from the ceiling coming down on our heads, though I lost a lot of good friends.

I was late for an IT meeting on the Navy Yard (my first meeting that morning ran overtime), and so missed the shooter.

It's why I don't buy lottery tickets -- my luck is exactly where I need it to be.

After splitting up with my partner of 13 years in 2003, I had decided to do a year on my own, to rebalance. I went to a reenactment Yule Revel to see old friends, and was going to leave after lunch, but they said "stay for dinner, you never know what will happen" -- and then they forgot to save me a seat at their table. So I sat with the leftovers at the end of the hall, and there was this tall man there who flirted with me and the other women at the table. He was willing to try medieval dancing -- not bad, either. At the end of the evening he asked for my phone number, which I declined to give, but we did exchange email addresses, which led to a six-month courtship via email, very 18th-century, before we ever went out on a date. We got married in 2012 after living together for about eight years.

Lynn