Mark Stoller and his wife, Andra, moved to Falcon with their family in 2007. Both are U.S. Air Force veterans and enjoy life with their daughters, extended family and adopted rescue dogs in Latigo. Mark is fortunate to have his wife and daughters as his muse for topics, people to meet and places to investigate.
There’s more to celebrate in February
By Mark Stoller
A big thank you to Ava for covering my column in the December and January issues! I appreciate her sharing her writing skills when she’s home on break from the University of Colorado Boulder. At the conclusion of this semester, she won’t have time to write for us as she’s been selected for a summer communications program to study in London.
There’s only 106 days left until graduation for my respiratory therapy program. This semester, I’ll have another 25 12-hour clinicals and lots of paperwork to prepare for my diploma and national licensing.
I looked through my previous February columns and found that I have completely covered Groundhog Day, President’s Day, the lengthy history of Valentine’s Day: why we exchange cards, researched relationship advice and found words of wisdom to those who are celebrating Singles Awareness Day.
When you look at a calendar, those are the primary days identified in small print for their appropriate day.
As they say in those old infomercials, “But wait … there’s more!”
I just found a website that lists specific national days for each day of every month. It’s called the “National Day Calendar.” ( https://www.nationaldaycalendar.com)
From organizations to townships to cities to states, the staff at National Day Calendar have collected every kind of “declared day” out there. With each national day, they also include the meaning behind it. You can even register your own national day on their website.
For example, this month they have “Did you know?” information such as, “The Anglo-Saxons called February Solmōnaþ, meaning ‘cake month.’” Although they offered cake to the gods in February, we suggest having cake with some friends. Also, did you know there is a 1 in 1,461 chance of a leap day birthday; and February is derived from the Latin februo, which means purity or to cleanse.
National Texas Day and National Baked Alaska day are both on Feb. 1. Ground Hog Day is Feb. 2, which is also National Tater Tot Day. Now that is a national day I can get behind and celebrate heartily. There are more days for carrot cake, thank-a-mail carrier, girls and women in sports day, and many more. Have some fun finding a day just for you.
What is unique to this year is that we have Feb. 29 on the calendar, which officially makes this a leap year. My girls enjoy the Amy Adams movie “Leap Year” but will only watch it on a leap year. A good friend of mine chose Feb. 29 in a leap year to retire from the Navy.
According to timeanddate.com, “Leap days keep our calendar in alignment with Earth’s revolutions around the sun. It takes Earth about 365.242189 days, or 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 45 seconds, to circle once around the sun. Leap days fix the rigid error of the 365 day Gregorian calendar by giving Earth the additional time it needs to complete a full circle around the sun.”
Additionally, there are rules to follow for leap years, “In our modern-day Gregorian calendar, three criteria must be taken into account to identify leap years: ‘The year must be evenly divisible by 4; if the year can also be evenly divided by 100, it is not a leap year, unless the year is also evenly divisible by 400. Then it is a leap year.’”According to these rules, the years 2000 and 2400 are leap years, while 1800, 1900, 2100, 2200, 2300, and 2500 are not leap years.” Clear as mud?
Have a leap year movie night or find a national day to share with someone special!
