Sitting at a table in the Center Court of Reading Terminal Market this afternoon, I idly noticed as a young woman walked over to a table near me and settled in. She pulled out laptop, an external hard drive and a portable mouse, looking like she was ready to do some serious work. Opening her computer, she half turned in her seat and looked back at me. I smiled, feeling slightly embarrassed, thinking I had gotten caught in the act of people-watching. She tentatively smiled back and then said to me, “Excuse me, but are you Marisa?”

My mind raced for just a second, wondering how this woman knew me. I nodded and said, “Yeah, I am.” She broke into a grin and said, “I thought that was you. I read your blog and recognized you from the pictures you post.” She introduced herself as Wendy, a name I recognized from my comments section, and we started chatting.

In the 2+ years I’ve been writing this blog, I’ve never been recognized by someone I don’t know while out in the world because of it. The closest I came was when I met Pax Romano at a blogger meetup almost two years ago and he told me with genuine tones of excitement in his voice that he liked my blog.

After a couple of minutes, I invited myself over to Wendy’s table, and despite her warnings that she really needed to do work*, we ended up talking for nearly 45 minutes. I discovered that she is an artist, who is doing amazing things with wax paintings and cut out paper. She showed me some of the pictures of her work, and it all dances this line between organic and scientific in a way that is really fascinating.

At one point in the conversation, she reminded me that the most recent comment she left on the blog was one on my post about running into people in Philadelphia. In it, she mentioned how it doesn’t happen to her too often in Philly, since she still doesn’t know too many people here. I responded that the longer she lived here, the more frequently it would become part of her life. I just didn’t know that I would be part of her very next unanticipated encounter. The synchronicity of it leaves me shaking my head with tickled joy.

*I hope I didn’t derail your afternoon of work too drastically!