Earlier this week, I bought myself Chinese food for lunch. I fumbled through about half my meal with the complementary chop sticks before surrendering to the plastic fork. Then I opened my fortune cookie. Nothing. The fortune cookie was empty.

What? How was I going to go back to my desk and get anything done without that guidance?

Okay. So it wasn't that bad. Like a lot of people, I suppose, I look at things like fortune cookies and horoscopes as checkpoints of sorts. They are little flashes of things that make you go, "hmmm,"  and then you move on. It's rare that I can even recall these flashes of wisdom even a short time later.

Then on Thursday I had taken my laptop to a coffee shop after work to do some writing. When I do this, I try not to take the cord, as it's just more bulk and if I'm all charged up, I'm usually fine. I ran my battery down to the last 10% or so, and closed myself off for the night only to discover that the cord no longer worked.

Ugh! This was much worse than an empty fortune cookie! Luckily, I have Internet access on my Wii, and I was able to order a new cord, but it won't come for at least a few days, and I had things I needed to write -- including this blog which is supposed to come out on every Saturday. The Wii is fun, but trying to write using a video game controller is not. So here I am, writing it ahead of time on a borrowed computer.

My weekend networking will not go as I planned, and much of it will most likely be replaced with a more low tech alternative, like reading a book or maybe even writing a poem with a good old fashioned pen. I've been working on my novel lately, and the last few days I've found myself craving poetry. Maybe this is a chance I wouldn't have given myself voluntarily without that little push from the Universe.

Life throws you a curveball sometimes, and you just have to make the best of it. Sometimes it turns out better than you think. Stick that in your fortune cookie.