Leap at the chance

It happens every four years. Not the election (although that can't get here soon enough), not the summer Olympics and not the World Cup. What am I talking about (a question I get all the time)? I'm talking about Leap Year.

Why is this year different than the three years before it? Because as you probably know, during leap year February has an additional day. So instead of 365 days, in leap years there are 366. Thank you Captain Obvious.

Since it's such an infrequent occurrence—like me exercising or Scarlett Johansson returning my calls, there are a few interesting facts about a leap year:

What do you call them? People born on February 29th call themselves Leaplings. Or Leapsters. Or Leapers.

Never tell me the odds. The odds of being born on February 29th are 1 in 1,461, or .068 per cent.

Happy birthday to you. Leap year babies actually get to have birthdays the other years. As a rule, they usually celebrate it March 1st.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's his birthday! Superman was born on February 29th.

I was curious why we even have leap years—who isn't, amirite? So here's a little explanation I grabbed off the interwebs:

Leap days keep our modern-day Gregorian calendar in alignment with Earth's revolutions around the Sun. It takes Earth approximately 365.242189 days, or 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 45 seconds, to circle once around the Sun. This is called a tropical year, and it starts on the March equinox. However, the Gregorian calendar has only 365 days in a year. If we didn't add a leap day on February 29 almost every four years, each calendar year would begin about 6 hours before the Earth completes its revolution around the Sun. As a consequence, our time reckoning would slowly drift apart from the tropical year and get increasingly out of sync with the seasons. With a deviation of approximately 6 hours per year, the seasons would shift by about 24 calendar days within 100 years. Allow this to happen for a while, and Northern Hemisphere dwellers will be celebrating Christmas in the middle of summer in a matter of a few centuries. Leap days fix that error by giving Earth the additional time it needs to complete a full circle around the Sun.

So not only is this blog wildly entertaining to read, it's also educational. You're welcome.

Leap years are like daylight saving, except instead of springing forward an hour you get to do it for a whole day. Ok, so analogies may not be my strong suit, but you see where I'm going.

My point is you have an extra day to do something you like, be nice to someone, forget all about pandemic diseases that may wipe out the entirety of mankind with a sneeze, and not listen to news about the unstable genius and his incoherent orange ramblings.

As everyone says to the bride, this is your day.

So do with it what you will, and make it one to remember.

Because no matter how you decide to celebrate your extra 24 hours, you'll only have four years to think of a way to top it.