It's amazing how sometimes two people will draw completely opposite conclusions from the same set of facts. Last night, a commuter plane crashed into a house near Buffalo, NY, killing all on board as well as one occupant of the house. Two other people in the house survived with minor injuries. Due to the steep angle of the aircraft's descent, none of the other houses in the neighborhood were damaged.

Thinking out loud, I muttered "the people in that house have the worst luck ever." My wife responded, saying she thought that the 2 survivors from the house were actually very lucky to be alive. True, in a sense, but put yourself in the shoes of the two survivors. Out of nowhere, an airplane with 49 people on board plunges into your house, apparently singling it out among the hundreds of other homes in the area. One family member is killed, and you and another are injured. Your formerly happy home is utterly destroyed, and has in fact has become a place of death, with charred bodies everywhere. All your possessions, family photos, clothes, etc are gone.

So, yes, they're fortunate to be alive, but I wouldn't exactly say it was their lucky day, either.
 

At the corner of 9th and F Streets NW, the same location I thought I saw Walter Cronkite riding a motorcycle, I saw a woman literally lose her lunch this morning. She was riding one of those folding bicycles, the ones with the small-diameter wheels, across F Street when she must have hit a bump in the road. A large Tupperware container with her lunch inside bounced off the bike rack, and into the street. With a splat, the Tupperware opened and dumped the food all over the street. It appeared to be some kind of pasta salad, with other components, and was spread out over an entire lane. She stopped on the opposite corner from me, and looked back ruefully at her meal, being run over by cars. The small wheels on those bikes don't soak up the bumps very well, and perhaps the meal wasn't secured well enough to the frame. Anyway, it was sad, and an unfortunate start to the day for the unfortunate bicycle commuter, but it was kindof funny (sorry...) the way it splattered all over the place.*  I was good, I didn't chuckle or even crack a smile! I tried to project a great deal of empathy as I continued on to work.

* For some reason, I've always been intrigued with food items being run over by cars, starting out in elementary school by putting my pint of milk under the wheels of the school bus, and watched it explode. Later, instead of throwing away expired or rotten produce, I'd carefully lay it in the street, and hide in the bushes to watch cars run over it. I dunno, blame it on my mom!