following omens

sitting in a hotel room in a country inn & suites in murfreesboro, tennessee, it suddenly occurs to me that my life is becoming a paulo coelho book—or that perhaps it always has been, and i'm just now realizing the fact because i only started reading him three weeks ago. regardless, the events that conspired to keep us from finding a hotel in/around our original destination (nashville), including but not limited to an accidental exit onto 88 from the road we planned to take essentially from elgin to champaign, a scenic route through the land between the lakes (rather than taking 24 around it) to get through kentucky and into tennessee, the discovery that, at the end of this scenic route, we had found ourselves just minutes from a cherished childhood getaway, the unfortunate (however slightly predictable) loss/frantic plan-making for the recreation of flat stanley, and, finally, a high school choir festival locking out every room in nashville proper and the outlying areas, sent us here to murfreesboro, where we are able to wake up this morning and visit the battlefield upon which the south began to fall.