Our city's annual self-recognition festival

Once a year, as most cities do, the city I work for throws a big bash to celebrate itself. I guess it is kind of like a birthday party for the city. There, that sounds more altruistic. I was tasked with working at the Police tent at this event serving the dual purposes of creating good will with the community and busting bad guys who were misbehaving there, both of which I got to do. I noticed a trend with some of the vendors targeting minors. They were seeling items that are viewed by minors as adult accesories. For example one vendor in particular who may or may not have been positioned directly across from the Police tent was selling exotic looking pocket knives, fake cigarettes that looked lit and half smoked, and cigarette tins with pictures that alluded to drug use on them. Another vendor was selling root beer in amber colored bottles that were shaped like beer bottles. The young people were willing to spend fairly ridiculous sums of money to have these adult looking assesories. The vendor who may or may not have been across from our tent, showed not even a drop of remorse as he said to me, upon breaking camp at the end of the weekend, "God blessed us with pretty good sales. Its been great being right next to you guys. See ya next year. They'll be expecting us!" I didn't even know how to respond.
I was faced with the constant tendency while looking for strange activity, that might indicate the presence of illegal objects or illegal actions, only seeing a sea of nicely formed buttocks and mammary glands. If only those skills were occupationally helpful.
Lastly, I noticed my constant revolting tendency to make self-pitying remarks about how many hours I was working and how hot I was. PATHETIC! I want to be better about:
-First of all not seeing myself as some suffering servant when in reality I am just being asked to do what I am being paid to do
-And second not having to draw attention to myself even if I am having to suffer a little bit.
I want to be better at just keeping my mouth shut. I hear even a fool is thought wise if he keeps his mouth shut.

Is there meaning in inconsequetial coincidences?

At work the other day I realized that I ran into the word Copper and the date January 29th several times. I wondered if it meant anything. I don't really expect that it does, but as I watch LOST I constantly see the charaters there not connecting the dots and not seeing coincidences that might have helped them better handle situations. I mean as a parent I constatnly remind my daughter of things to make life work better for her. Maybe God does that too. I wonder how he does it? Sometimes it is more obvious like the other day when someone at work who was having a bad day took it out on me and God used that to help me realize later after took my bad day out on my wife that maybe she doesn't like that either! Copper and 1-29 are probably too concrete, God seems more subtle than that. Probably just my brain trying to make sense of random meaningless information. Today a bunch of electrical mishaps, an outlet I had rewired shorted out and blew a breaker, a light switch stopped working (but no blown breaker!?!), our air conditioning compressor stopped working (again no blown breaker?). The significance?