… What if I don’t Wanna?
By Jeff Salter
Let me begin by stating – if you don’t already know this about me – that I’m naturally suspicious about people messing with my TIME. The entire fraud of Daylight Savings Time is simply a plot to keep me off balance for several weeks twice a year.
There are other things about TIME which bother me, for example: why does the new day begin at one second after midnight? It seems easy enough to make the new day start at 6 a.m. (or 8:30 when I get up these days).
So, you can see that I REALLY don’t like people messing with my TIME.
Leap Year
A lot of things about Leap-Year-Day bother me.
* Its name. Why couldn’t it be Bump Year? Or … Quadra-just Day? Maybe … Extra Hours Day? Or … to properly explain how and why we even have it: “Stupid Mistake in the Olden Calendar’s Day”.
* Its schedule. Who on earth decided to add it to FEBRUARY? That’s during the school term! As a kid, I always believed – if we were entitled to an extra day at all – it should logically be during the summer! Yeah … add it to June — June has room for another day.
* Its frequency. Yeah, that’s what I said. If it’s such a big deal to ‘catch-up’ to the earth’s rotation, why not make a six-hour adjustment each year? If you tacked it to Dec. 31st, the New Year’s parties could last longer. OR … add a half-hour to the first Saturday of each month.
* Its significance. In the universe, distance is supposedly measured in light-years — how far light travels in one year. Hmm. If you’re doing a lot of inter-planetary travel, wouldn’t this mess up your itinerary? Seems like you might miss the earth entirely if every four of those years has an extra day. An alien in a ‘hotrod’ spaceship might end up on Venus or Mars instead!
Months
While we’re on this general topic: the months are already all screwed up. If they’re based on the lunar cycles, I don’t see the pattern. If they’re based on Zodiac signs, why do all the SIGNS begin and end during two different months? If I had my way, for example, December would be called Sagitare … and would be from Nov. 23 to Dec. 22. [Of course, all the other ones would have to slide down as well. Oh, and I’d replace the once called ‘Cancer’.]
For any of you who would like the REAL 411 about Leap-Day-Year, read this article:
http://www.recorderonline.com/articles/leap-51859-day-year.html
Questions:
* What did you do with your ‘extra’ day yesterday?
* Is it a PLUS or a MINUS to have – every four years – an ‘extra’ day at the end of February …?
Angela Schroeder
Patricia Kiyono
Elaine Cantrell
Jeff Salter
Joselyn
Tonette Joyce
Four Foxes, One Hound 
Since I’m now retired I don’t get an extra days pay of SS from the government even though those that work for them get extra pay. So for me, it’s a waste of a totally useless timespan. Adding 30 minutes to a Sunday would be a good idea, Just think of the extra sleep we could get or the extra time watching sports.
I really haven’t given the month thing much thought except that it’s hard to remember how many days a particular month has, unless I recite the little ditty we all learned in grade school or look at a calendar.
What does surprise me is the government, who sticks their noses in everything in our lives hasn’t tried to do something about this extra day thing. Of course it does give the politicians an extra day to lie to us about how they plan to change our lives for the better.
LikeLike
“An Extra Day to Lie to Us” — would be a great title for somebody’s new novel!
Yeah, I distrust people who meddle in my life.
And I never knew that gov’t empl. got *paid” for the 29th.
I worked with City gov’t for many years and we were payed semi-monthly, based 86.6 hrs. as I recall. Nobody ever explained, to my satisfaction, how they arrived at that number.
Thanks for visiting again, Lindsay. Hope Dakota didn’t mind the Leap Day.
LikeLike
While I was looking forward to an “extra” day, it ended up pretty much sucking! Can we skip yesterday’s “Leap?”
LikeLike
That would be my notion as well, Louisa.
Let’s just leap past the Leap thing.
I plan to introduce a constitutional amendment to have the half-hour added to the first Sat. of each month … and get away from all this Feb. 29th stuff.
LOL
LikeLike
I have never understood why the idea of ‘time’ in hours of 60 minute increments, split into 24with a remainder…why didn’t they decide it was flawed to begin with? I agree with you, Jeff…the 30-31 day months, having nothing to do with either Zodiac or Lunar time frames, hello?…and what the heck did February do to deserve being short-changed? I always wondered why they did not give it a couple of the 31sts from other months. Huh? (I have to admit,I never thought of getting an extra day in June…down-right brilliant, Jeff!)
I was really hoping to use that ‘extra’ day wisely, but it went to mundane matters like the rest of this month.
LikeLike
Yeah, mundane for me, also, Tonette. Although there was some excitement when we heard the tornado sirens in early afternoon.
Also it rained — very hard — off and on for much of the afternoon/evening.
In fact — there was so much bad weather that our church services were cancelled for last night. So Denise didn’t have to go serve food and I didn’t have to teach the 1st & 2nd grader lesson.
LikeLike
LOL! Jeff, you sound a bit cranky today. Did the extra day throw you off? 🙂
For me, leap year makes absolutely no difference to me whatsoever. The way I see it, the sun came up and the sun went down. Good enough for me. Ha!
Jenn!
LikeLike
Yes, Jenn. I think I was off my oats yesterday. Well, I wrote it on Tue. Ha.
Turned out to be a very odd day — with weather issues (see above reply) and other surprises in other areas.
Glad it’s over.
Funny, I didn’t feel anything different in the earth’s rotation. Hmm.
LikeLike
I don’t mind having an extra date in the calendar. But it should definitely be a holiday. And it should be some other season. In my part of the country, people are just recovering from Fat Tuesday, and are well into Lent’s denial. Not a prime time for a holiday. February is only good if you’re able to take off to someplace excellent winter recreational opportunities–Aspen or Turks. And I believe the new holiday should be for everyone. How about July 3?
LikeLike
Yes, Chris. It SHOULD be a holiday.
And, clearly ought to be in the warm months.
It’s obvious that Pope Gregory and/or Julius Caesar — both of whom got ‘credit’ for this debacle in the article I read — completely missed the boat about making this correction.
The single aspect they DID understand correctly was that the earth did not rotate on the precise schedule of numbers which humans had come up with.
Native Americans — if I’ve got my movie dialog straight — referred to seasons rather than months … and to “summers” rather than years. So they were in touch with the actual timetable of the earth.
LikeLike
I seemed to have remembered that Leap Day was rather like Sadie Hawkins Day where women could ask men out or to propose to them. To check my memory, I googled that question and I was right. According to folk tradition is was called “Ladies Privilege”. Another folk tradition suggests that if a woman proposes and the man does not want to marry her, he has to pay a significant forfeiture such as a really nice dress. It is thought that “Ladies privilege” dates back to the 13th century where St. Bridget asked St. Patrick to allow women this privilege for the whole of Leap Year, but he granted just Leap Day. I thought that your followers would find this interesting. I found this info on Snopes and there is more to read on this topic. As far as the day for us, it was so memorable that it snowed and made us Southerners happy, but it rained later and got rid of the snow and made my husband happy. We are suppose to get more snow/sleet/rain tonight.
LikeLike
Thanks, Sug. That does interest me.
I love learning more about the origins of certain traditions. IN many cases, it turns out that things have changed so much over the generations that the person(s) or entity which originated something would scarcely even recognize it today.
LOL
LikeLike
lol. Jeff, you crack me up. I’m not big on the daylight and standard time changes. Did you know that St. John’s, Nova Scotia has a 1/2 hour time change from everyone else? I always liked the idea of an extra day every 4 years…until Jillian reminded me it coincides with elections. lol However, being one of those lovely people with a June birthday, I’m not sure at all that I want to be “replaced”. lol a bunch.
LikeLike
No I didn’t realize that, Laurie. Wonder why Nova Scotia breaks the mold?
Evidently it works for them.
I’d like to carve out an area around Possum Trot and make it a time zone free from interference of gov’t bureaucrats. Of course, the cable company would still dictate what time our TV shows would appear, but … hey, you have to make some compromises.
LikeLike
There are several places in the world that add the 1/2 hour time change.It threw me off when I was talking to a friend in India and he said it was 7:25AM, when it was 9:50 PM on my clock.
And did you hear about Samoa changing its place on the other side of the International Date Line? Can you imagine the confusion? We think we have it bad with Daylight Savings Time!
LikeLike
I think I did hear something, last year, about Samoa regaining a day — or was it losing a day — when they jigged the international date line around their boundary.
When I was stationed in Clovis NM, we were on the very edge of Central time and Mountain time. So, all our TV stations were in Amarillo TX and on Central. Primetime programming began at 5 p.m. local time. LOL.
LikeLike
I must be accepting because I have never given Leap Year much thought. Well until now. For us we had scheduled new granite in the kitchen for the 1st and got mixed up on what day of the week it was (Wed or Thurs) They are here now so all is okay but we had an extra day of no kitchen because we had it ready on Wed.
LikeLike
Hey, that could be a class-action lawsuit! Gather all the folks, like you, who had to endure an extra day of inconvenience because of people who didn’t deliver (or whatever). Think of the headlines. You could be on Oprah!
LikeLike
You are so funny. When are you going to have a book out there. I’m on your waiting list. If you write anything like you blog you’re going to be a roaring success.
LikeLike
Thank you, Lavada. [You have me blushing.] You are very kind.
Actually, I have a contract with Astraea Press for my novel “The Overnighter’s Secrets” — romantic suspense at 115,000 wds — which is sched. for release during April.
This is my 7th completed novel and will be my first fiction to be published.
Four of my other novel ms. are comedic, incl. two which are romantic comedies (in the ‘screwball’ vein). One of those screwball rom coms is currently under review by a publisher, who’s had it since late Dec. [Somehow my optimism has dimmed in the many weeks since they’ve had it.]
LikeLike
I didn’t know you had contracted with anyone- Congratulations!!!!!
As far as the time thing goes….it’s a government conspiracy.
LikeLike
Thanks, Stacey.
I was actually holding off on a more general announcement until I got my cover to show-off. But I began telling people last week.
I was afraid I’d “hex” it if I spoke about it too early in the process. I received the signed contract on Dec. 31 … and didn’t even tell my kids until I had that paper in my hand.
LikeLike
The only thing I don’t like about Leap Day is it puts off the arrival of March. I tend to think in meteorological seasons (Dec, Jan, and Feb are “winter”) so in that context Feb 29 keeps Spring (Mar, Apr, and May) away. GAH! LOL.
Great post, Jeff!
LikeLike
Good point, Sarah. Here in Possum Trot, I think of “winter” as those three months plus the last half of Nov. and first half of March. And my first winter here was cold weather almost that entire time.
This current winter season has been very mild so far, but the previous winter was horrid. My grandkids (living here) lost 16 school days due to snow.
LikeLike
Pingback: Not Leaping Very High | Four Foxes, One Hound