Wow … it’s been over a week since I’ve done a proper post!  A lot has happened since then.  I finished about six LEGO (or LEGO-compatible) sets for my son, including the snake variation of Mindstorms, the LEGO Batman Movie Batcave and a battlecruiser that we picked up at the WWII Museum in New Orleans.  I actually made it past midnight on New Year’s Eve (instead of celebrating on East Coast time so I could be in bed by 10).  And I caught up on a LOT of TV and movies.

One of the TV shows I watched was Stranger Things on Netflix.  It’s sort of a Goonies meets X-Files series set in the 1980s, starring the ultimate non-Heather, Winona Ryder, and a bunch of adorable, precocious kids.  I highly recommend it, especially if you grew up in the 1970s or ’80s and got into sci-fi or video games and still get a kick out of those movies where the geeky science kids save the day.

But the one thing that was bothering me during my day-and-a-half binge-session was the guy who played Jim Hopper, the Chief of Police.  He looked so familiar to me, but I couldn’t place him.  Thankfully, that’s what the Internet Movie Database is for, and I looked up David Harbour and found out he’s been in a ton of TV shows and movies … although (surprisingly) nothing I’ve ever watched … but I saw he went to college with me and was in the same class.  And then I realized THAT’S where I had seen him.  My college isn’t that big … maybe a little over 1,000 in each undergraduate class … and it’s kind of in the middle of nowhere, so you got to know faces really well, even if you didn’t know the names to go with them.

Realizing a connection like this always gives me a little jolt.  We’re so much more mobile and interconnected than I ever thought possible.  We travel, we move, we spend time on social media, so it’s inevitable we’re going to come across some of the same people at multiple points in our lives, even if the different contexts may cause us not to realize it at first.  An extreme example?  I went out on two dates with a guy here in Los Angeles before I realized he was the same guy who had taught a seminar I had taken in law school in Texas.  He seemed familiar, but it just never occurred to me … seeing him out here, outside of law.  But I was listening to an NPR story on class actions one day, and I thought of that class, and then it just clicked.

They say we’re all separated by six or fewer degrees; we just need to figure out what those connections are.  I think that’s becoming more and more true and that there might be some shared moment between you and who you think is a total stranger.  And since my college connections started this whole train of thought, I couldn’t help but select a preppy outfit that screams (at least to me) East Coast college when I walked into my closet this morning.  Here, I’m wearing a Ralph Lauren camel leather skirt paired with a Ralph Lauren navy sweater (both from http://www.ralphlauren.com), a Theory white button-down shirt and Christian Louboutin camel knee boots.

I also did a little Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon just to have some fun with this.  I think I can get to him in four degrees …