signs & senses

It's weird to see the full picture when the time has had a chance to put the pieces together. Last night at 6:30p I met up with my cousin's best friend for dinner at the Taphouse restaurant in Bellevue Galleria. I had come down 108th and realized that I needed to be the next street over (on 106th), and so I turned onto NE 4th to enter the parking garage from the backside.

It had been awhile since I had been over there and as I turned off of 4th St to get to the parking garage, I looked over to my left to see a huge gaping hole in the ground where the construction had obviously been going on for many months. Overhead I saw a crane with a digger shovel on it swinging across the driveway I was about to enter. I hesitated and waited for it to pass over before I continued on 200 yards to the parking garage.

We had a lovely dinner, catching up on the last four months. We finished up pretty quickly and headed for the parking garage to get to our cars. I remember looking at my watch and seeing it was around 7:45p. Wow, we finished dinner early. As I pulled out of the parking garage, I turned onto 106th St and headed for the freeway. I saw that I had missed a call from my sister and decided to call her back.

I turned onto NE 8th and dialed her number, just as there were three firetrucks speeding down the road coming from the opposite direction. Hmmm. I wonder what that's all about?

My sister was over at R's house because her husband was helping R with something on the car. I decided that since it was still early, I'd surprise R and head over to his place instead of going home. Once on the freeway, I again saw more firetrucks racing down the road in the other direction. Hmmm, pause for thought and kept driving.

Didn't think too much of any of this until this morning when I turned on the news. "Crane collapses in Bellevue at 7:45p, killing one man."

Holy crap! And then all of the pieces started to come together. It happened just a block from where I had been having dinner. Which crane was it? The one that I happened to take notice of when I was pulling into the parking garage? I don't think so, but still. And all of the firetrucks...they must have been responding to the accident. And as I was driving away from the restaurant -- it must have just happened just the block behind me, but I didn't notice because I decide to head north instead of south when I turned out of the parking garage.

I think one of our office buildings (Civica) was impacted by the accident as well. So sad, and really makes me realize that I have no control over things like this. I can't even imagine what it must have been for the person who died. Sitting in his apartment and then all of a sudden the roof collapses. No notice, no time to react. It just happens.

So, in a totally separate interesting signs situation -- R has been telling me that the number 11 keeps showing up for him. Every time he looks at a clock it's xx:11. He missed a phone call on his phone it ended with xxx-xx11. He's started to notice this, and I have been with him a couple of times when he's experienced the 11 phenomena. One of his patients at work is very much into numerology, astrology, etc. and said it was a good sign. I'm not really sure what it's supposed to symbolize, but R seems to think it's a confirmation of all things good in his life.

I looked up the number 11 on a numerlogy site and it said this: 11 is 1 + 1 = 2 (Eleven represents unified perfection). I like this theory. :) Will be interesting to have hindsight on this one if it ever pans out to be something of relevance and importance.