Quadrennium

The official leap year day mascot.

Leap Year!


For some reason the randomness (ok, I know it's not really random and that we need this day every 4 years to balance that fraction of leftover sun time that doesn't quite fit in to our set schedule) of February 29th completely amuses me. Today possibly more so because the morning commute seemed to indicate a lot of people looked at today as a bonus and took a holiday. Disneyland had an extra day of fun, which I'm sure drew tons more crowds than a typical February Tuesday, and honestly I really wish I didn't spend it working.


But there was nachos, so I win a little bit.


Leap Year is traditionally the one day a woman is allowed (encouraged?) to propose marriage to a man. There's at least one restaurant in Britain that is capitalizing on this tradition, letting ladies order the Leap Year Special, a steak with "will you marry me?" seared into it. If I were to propose marriage that is nowhere near the way I'd do it, but it is a fantastic idea and I wonder how many women took advantage of the opportunity. And it does follow the notion that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, a notion I take to heart. Plus, what meat eater could say no to a woman proposing with steak? You'd at least get a chuckle and a great story if it didn't work out, plus apparently 12 pairs of gloves the man would give his spurrned woman to cover her ringless shame.


I've always pitied people who happened to be born on February 29th (and wondered if it was a coincidence that I have 3 relatives with February 28th birthdays) because they are essentially birthdayless for the majority of their lives, and most places officially recognizing their birthdays on March 1, making them technically wait a day. Fortunately, "leapers" turn 16 on a leap year, which means they can get their driver's licenses on their actual birthday, but unfortunately they don't turn 21 on a leap year, so legal drinking gets to wait a day.


Leap Year does another thing: the days of February and March are exactly the same, except March has a few extras. But during Leap Year there's an extra day of February so that scheme is thrown off, which, however, is something you'd only notice if you manually create a calendar every month.


Unfortunately for me this year, Leap Year mostly sucked, but it did end nicely and I did earn an extra day of pay, so it wasn't all bad. The next Leap Year will be in 2016... wonder what life will be like then?