November 26, 2010 – “Blow”: the word can mean many things as in “blow your mind”, or “blow a hole through everything you thought you knew”, or….

Background – Thanksgiving family visit up north and I’m hanging out in front of the TV with my brother-in-law.  We start talking about our favorite actors and settle on someone we have in common, Johnny Depp.  That naturally led us to our favorite “Depp” movies, mine being “Chocolat”.  My brother-in-laws favorite movie was one of the less popular ones – so much so that he couldn’t remember the name of it!  He just kept saying “you know the one, with Al Pacino”… this was absolutely no help at all in retrieving the title of this movie.  About this time, my son wandered through the room (much to my relief) and I recruited him to help his uncle with the obsessive mission of figuring out the name of this movie.   He came up with the title “Blow”, also a good movie, but not my brother-in-laws favorite (you get that if you saw “Chocolat” ;)!!  I finally picked up a magazine in order to end the co-dependency that I had been saddled with in my brother-in-laws pre-occupation with solving this memory Charlie horse.  I didn’t really care all that much and therefore left him to his brooding and muttering “… Al Pacino…not one of the more popular ones…come on, it was “Jimmy” or “Johnny” somethin…”

S.C.O.U.T. – A few moments passed (maybe 10-15 min) and my brother-in-law thankfully became distracted by looking for a movie to watch on the cable guide.  He was scrolling through when he stopped and gave a little laugh “huh!  That’s it!  That’s the movie, “Donnie Brasco” I dropped my magazine and looked at the TV screen, that old familiar tingle creeping up my spine.  Sure enough, there on the guide, playing at 10:30 am was the Johnny Depp movie “Donny Brasco”, the one with Al Pacino.  Uncanny right?!!  I mean, go to your TV and check the guide for this movie right now.  I would bet cold hard cash that you can’t find it.  The tingle creeping up my spine hit my scalp and carpeted my head, making my hair stand on end…the movie playing two slots above “Donnie Brasco” was the movie “Blow”. 

Now, there was no sign of “Chocolat”, which made me wonder.  Perhaps I wasn’t observed in this Strange Case Of Uncanny Timing because I didn’t really care.  It was my brother-in-law and my son who put the mental muscle behind the search.  Perhaps. 

“I am a collector of notes upon subjects that have diversity, such as the sudden appearance of purple Englishmen, and a reported growth of hair on the bald head of a mummy. But my liveliest interest is not so much in things, as in the relations of things. I have spent much time thinking about the alleged pseudo-relations that are called coincidences.”

“What if some of them should not be coincidences?”

Charles Fort (1874-1932) in: Wild Talents.

November 16, 2010 - "There's a first time for everything" - have you ever really thought about that old adage? What came before the "first time for everything"?

Background – Our family is not a military family, and while we have a great deal of respect for our nation’s service members, I found myself frustrated during a random question/conversation with my fifteen year old about the Medal of Honor.   I felt like it was something that I should know, and somewhat un-patriotic for not knowing it.  The question was “Is the Medal of Honor awarded to living soldiers too, or only deceased soldiers?”  I began an answer because I was sure I had to know, but quickly realized that I had absolutely no idea!  It was an important question, one that every American should know the answer to, and I told my son that we would absolutely look it up when we got home (or at least within the next few days, or weeks, or by the time….ugggh, stupid procrastination!).  Happily the universe had my back….

S.C.O.U.T. – THE VERY NEXT MORNING the news reported that President Obama will be awarding the Medal of Honor – for the very first time – to a living service member from the Iraq/Afghanistan wars!  I was literally stunned!  I went back and asked my son why he had brought up that question (I suspected maybe he had seen it on the news as well – although he doesn’t watch much news, and I knew I hadn’t seen this report yet so it was highly unlikely that he had – or maybe the school had announced the story) and he told me that his class had been reading a war book for the last few weeks and the President in the book had awarded the Medal of Honor to one of the characters.  It had gotten him thinking about the medal, what it meant, and who got it. 

I passed the information along to my son, who was equally stunned at the timing.  Timing, such a funny thing in this world…“Now that he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me.  People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion” ~ Albert Einstein upon the death of his life-long friend, Michele Besso.

November 8, 2010 – To what degree do you believe in “A Strange Case Of Uncanny Timing”

Background - Our French exchange student challenged our family to do a lot of conversions to not only the metric system, but from Fahrenheit to Celsius.  During these conversion challenges I began to wonder about the symbol for degrees (the little open dot in the upper right hand corner of the number) which made a statement of temperature instantly recognizable.  I wondered where this symbol had come from and why this particular symbol had been chosen to represent temperature.  I laughed at myself because I felt like this was something I should already know - having gone through many, many years of schooling.  I decided to do what anyone else, who wants to know anything about anything, does these days - Google it when I had a chance.  Which essentially meant never – I’m a master procrastinator and still can’t work that function on my “smart phone” (which is apparently smarter than me, grrrr).

.C.O.U.T. - The next day I flip open my U.J.B.R. (Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader – The “Fast Acting, Long Lasting 18^th Edition, pg 14) and read the random, bottom crawling fact… “The degree symbol (they show a picture of the symbol, but I can’t find it on my keyboard, although I know there probably one there somewhere, grrrrr) is an ancient symbol representing the sun”.  Bam!  There you have it.  Asked and answered.

#1 – I have never wondered about the degree symbol before.

#2 – Out of roughly 3,000 pages of U.J.B.R.  reading, this is the only place this little tid-bit appears, just days after I wondered about it.

#3 - Simply uncanny.

"The atoms or elementary particles themselves are not real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts."  ~ Werner Heisenberg

Reader contribution - Would you like some muscle with that Namaste?

A friend of a friend posted on her blog about my blog!  She had a S.C.O.U.T. and wanted to share it....

One of my dearest friends, Kelly, has a friend who writes a pretty cool blog...S.C.O.U.T. (an acronym for A Strange Case of Uncanny Timing).  Essentially, she writes about situations that occur in her life and the lives of those around her that are unexplainable.  For instance, have you ever thought about a friend you haven't talked to or even thought about in years who inexplicably calls you a day after you thought of him/her?  Well, if you know what I am talking about, you must check out her blog AND keep reading this one, because I just had a S.C.O.U.T.experience myself involving one of my posts from yesterday and STROGA yoga studio!

In my Do/Sip post from yesterday, I unveiled a deal for yoga led by a super capable instructor from STROGA set in the glorious countryside of Rappahanock Cellars!  Sounds decadent doesn't it?

Before I post anything that is new to me, I do some research to ensure that it is something that I would actually do myself!  I would totally do yoga in a vineyard!!  Right? 

Well, I must be honest with you.  I had not heard of STROGA until yesterday.  Only after my due diligence found that the folks over at STROGA are top notch and offer a unique approach to yoga with an emphasis on strength training, hence the name, did I feel comfortable sharing it with you! 

I digress...back to my S.C.O.U.T. moment.  Today I open up an email from Recoup, which is a fantastic deal site that gives a portion of your purchase to a selected charity of your choice.  You can even increase your charitable donation by decreasing your savings.  Totally up to you.  So I open the Recoup email, and what do I see?  A deal from the very same yoga studio that I had never heard of until yesterday.  You guessed it!  STROGA!  I think it's a sign that I must either buy theRecoup offer or head down to Rappahanock Cellars for one of their Vinyasa in the Vineyard experiences through Living Social!  Either way I take my S.C.O.U.T. experience full circle AND get some zen mind and body time to boot!  Namaste. 

~ Love her blog by the way!  Check it out   http://verumvita.posterous.com/do-29-for-five-yoga-or-fitness-classes-on-rec

October 28, 2010 - "Bordeaux"; delicious wine, beautiful French city, or spine tingling S.C.O.U.T.?

Background – I spent the afternoon daydreaming about going to Bordeaux.  Our French student, who resides in this coastal French city, left this afternoon to return to his beloved home.  He had spent a good portion of his visit with us working to convince me that we must all come to visit.  I vowed that we would.  I had never worked up the nerve, during his entire visit, to tell him that upon his arrival I had learned that Bordeaux was an actual city in France (!) and not just a delicious wine from a region in France.  I was totally embarrassed at my ignorance of this fact.  Now that I knew however, visiting this wonderful little city was all I thought about for the rest of the day.

S.C.O.U.T. – My husband and I had been invited to a silent auction fund raiser that same night.  As we made our way down the table looking at everything from sports paraphernalia to spa getaways we approached the grand auction item of the night… a five day trip to the quaint little city of Bordeaux France for wine tasting and sightseeing!  I was swayed on my feet as the realization that one week ago I didn’t even know Bordeaux was a city, that I had spent this entire day dreaming of a visit to this newly discovered city, and that now I standing in front of an opportunity to take that very trip!  Simply uncanny!!  “Did my intense earlier musings bring this opportunity into being, or was it nothing more than a coincidence?”  That is my question, and as I trundle along through life - watching, recording and examining - the answer is becoming chillingly clear to me.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to talk my husband into throwing caution to the wind, liquidating the kid’s college funds and bidding aggressively on this tripL.  Instead, we made a small fantasy bid and vowed that we would someday, when the kids were older, make our way to Bordeaux. 

"The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment."  ~ Bernard d'Espagnat

October 29, 2010 - "ESP" - Extra Sensory Perception OR Electrifyingly Staggering Phenomenon

Background – Mike (my husband) shot a message to a woman (Leslie) who he hadn’t spoken to in some time.  He was starting a new job thought they could talk some business to their mutual benefit.  The next morning the phone rang – it was Leslie returning his message.

S.C.O.U.T. – The first thing out of her mouth was “OMG!  You must have ESP!  Bob Ayres and I were on a plane yesterday talking about you and it made me think that I need to give you a call.  When I got home I got your message and it totally freaked me out!!”

Re-al-i-ty - "The state or quality of being real" according to dictionary.com

This little parlor trick has happened to me on more than one occasion, it has clearly happened to Leslie, and I know it has happened to youJ, and at that moment did you stop to think?  I mean really think, about whether you truly believe it was just a coincidence?  As that tingle creped down your spine and, just for a split second, you felt the overwhelming awe that our world is nowhere near as solid as it appears…. “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one” ~ Albert Einstein.

October 29, 2010 - I wonder what the French word for "entanglement" is?

Background – I took Tongi - the French exchange student who was staying with us - out to the outlet shops in Leesburg so he could pick up some fancy American jeans before heading home.  We were chatting about this and that and I mentioned something about a court case that was going on locally and said the word “attorney”.  Tongi was trying to understand this word and ask me a few questions to clarify.  When I told him that “attorney” was the same word as “lawyer” he understood immediately what I had been saying.  He proceeded to tell me that the word “attorney” in French is the same word for a green fruit with black skin and a large round pit in the middle.  At first I was confused and then it clicked, “avocado”!  We talked about the two words for a moment and I wondered how in the world those two things could have the same word in French.

S.C.O.U.T. – That very same afternoon, I was driving Tongi and Zack (my son) around and Zack begins to tell me a story about his French class earlier that morning - they had learned that the word for attorney is the same word for avocado (!!) and one of the boys in the class found that fact so funny that it took the teacher 15 minutes to get him to stop laughing and get back to the lesson of the day.  By this time I had a substantial tingle running down my spine.  I asked Zack what time he had his French class and we figured out that Tongi and I were driving to the outlets and having nearly the very same conversation about the funny green fruit and the French word for attorney… at the very same time!  Crazy uncanny. 

The word “entanglement” is used to describe a phenomenon from quantum mechanics in which two particles, once “entangled”, behave instantaneously in an identical manner…no matter how far apart they are!!  I’m talking across the room or across the Universe!  This phenomenon has been studied for years and been proven over and over again.  We are, on our fundamental level, made up of these very same particles.  Is “uncanny” just another word for “entangled”?  and if so, the implications are staggering, don’t you agree?!!