I had couple of weird coincidences on Wednesday that I didn’t realize until yesterday morning. Driving home, I was listening to the audiobook version of The World Without Us, an interesting little book about what would happen to the planet if everyone just happened to disappear one day. I exited the freeway a couple of minutes after six (it’s a long and unintersting story as to how I know that) and as I merged onto Hennepin Avenue I found myself listening to how quickly New York’s bridges would fall apart and collapse without people around to care for them.

After parking my car, I stopped at our mailbox and found our two most recent rentals had arrived from Netflix. The DVDs? One was a movie called Big Night, and the other was a documentary called The Bridge.

Somewhere between the time I got off the Interstate and entered my apartment–a span of maybe three or four minutes–35W fell into the Mississippi.