Serendipity and A really good story

OK - nothing new to report, just a story I thought you'd enjoy.

I’ve just come across a word that I’ve always liked, but could never really, totally understand it’s meaning. I just liked the way it sounded, happy like. Well, the word is 'serendipity', which means the facility of making chance happy finds. Or to put it another way, accidental positive outcomes.

Martin Avis, of the Martin Avis Kick Start ezine, read about a great example of serendipity in New Scientist magazine …... and I thought I'd pass it along. Just good reading.

“During the second world war, government bureaucrats seconded dozens of mathematicians, code experts and engineers to work at the top secret Bletchley Park research establishment in England. Their job was to find a way to decipher the German Enigma codes - a task that was fantastically difficult.

“ One such scientist, a man called Geoffrey Tandy, was ordered to go to work among the high-powered coders and encrypters.

“Nothing strange there, except that Mr Tandy didn't know a code from a lump of coal. His scientific speciality was seaweed. The government functionary who had ordered him to Bletchley Park had confused the term 'cryptogram' - secret codes - with the term 'cryptogam' - an obscure term in the study of seaweed.

“Mr Tandy, no doubt, felt like a fish out of water.

“But our friend serendipity came to the rescue.

“One day some sodden notebooks arrived at Bletchley.
They were German code books that had been rescued from a sunken U-Boat. Reading the books was impossible because of their poor state of preservation, but Geoffrey Tandy had the answer. He knew exactly what to do - he treated the pages like fragile seaweed and knew exactly the right kinds of absorbent material to use to dry them out safely.

“A lot more work was needed to be done before the Enigma code could be deciphered, but without the happy accident that brought a seaweed expert into the company of code breakers, the process may never have even got started.”

Nutin' to sell this post - consider it serendipity ...................

I just had an Epiphany

As most of you know, the old Air Force Base, where Carrie, Robin and I did some living and growing in the early 60's, has been closed down since about 1993 or so, and a lot of development is going on there right now. Due to open in April of this year is a place called Market Commons, one of those residentail/retail communities (live above, shop ground level) that are really popular right now.

Well, (and Mel can help advise on this) I thought that having a place called the NCO Club might be a very viable venue to open there. Along the lines of the original NCO Club when the MBAFB was alive and well. A lot of NCO's partied there over the years, our Dad and Mom included. This place could have a lot of memorabilia from days past, good cheap beer and booze, basic menu. Whatever. Oh well, it was just a passing idea. Ocifers not allowed.

Here's another idea to stave off creeping Alzheimer's , exercize your brain.

A new book out last month puts forth evidence that "exercise is the single best thing you can do for your brain," ........."Some of the myths about the brain—that it was not changeable, that there was nothing you could do about cognitive decline—have really been dispelled in the past 10 years," says Lynda Anderson, director of the Healthy Aging Program at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, whose bold goal is "to maintain or improve the cognitive performance of all adults." The potential payoff is enormous. Alzheimer's now afflicts 4.5 million people in the United States—double the number in 1980—and is expected to reach 16 million by 2050. "Statistics show if we could delay the onset of Alzheimer's by five years, the number of people with the disease would be cut in half," says Yaakov Stern, a cognitive neuroscientist at Columbia University.

I've found a site that helps you exercize your brain - it's called My Brain Trainer. Check it out.

Enough for Today - my brain's tired. TTFN!

January is Two-fers Month

Flying? Around here? Well, we did. Sally got us a deal for a 20 minute fly around the North Strand the other day. That was great. I've never had a chance to see the area from the air. There's a picture posted here somewhere, check it out.

Here @thebeach, January is usually a very slow month. The ocean is cold (duh!) and the golfers are taking the month off. What's a restaraunt to do? Well, instead of closing during the winter doldrums, a lot (and I mean a lot) of the eateries up and down the Grand Strand offer "buy one get one free," 50% off entries, and "buy one get 50% off your second entree" type deals.

For example, the very popular Charaschurria Rioz at Broadway @ the beach was offering 50% off on Sundays during the month of January. The normal fixed price on this Brazilian style restaraunt is maybe $38 or so? Well, at half off, that's a great deal for those of us who live here and normally cannot afford tourist prices. Boy howdy, was that place crowded last Sunday. There were lines to get in lines just to register to get in line to eat. What a zoo, but it just goes to show you how popular these deals for locals have become.

We headed over the Liberty last Wednesday where it one the old "buy one get one free" deal, and our wait was like 1 hour. But in a lot of these places, the wait to try the places is really worth it because it gives us a chance to try places we normally wouldn't.

Some of these place continue their deals into February, so we're still trying our hand. In the meantime, we're also waiting for Hoskins to reopen.

TTFN - I'm outta here till the next time.