Well, you know I love a theme. Frankly, I’m pretty on board when it comes to conjuring any reason to celebrate. But did you also know I’m pretty nerdy? Or, um, I mean hopelessly and proudly nerdy? Yeah, I spent my homely formative years with thick glasses and buck teeth, so nerdiness was a pretty natural fit. Anyway, ahem, I digress…

A BIT OF SUPER NERDY MATH TRIVIA

I was an English major/Speech Communications minor as an undergrad, but I think I would have minored in Math had they allowed it. That’s right, I took EXTRA math in college. For FUN. …So as I researched Leap Year origins for my eldest child’s class, my nerdy little heart leapt with giddy joy.

As you probably already know, we add a day every four years to make up for a solar year actually being about 365.25 days long. But did you know that a Leap Year does NOT occur every four years? This is because a solar year is actually 11 minutes & 14 seconds shy of 365.25 days, so by adding an extra day every four years, we still get off track. to solve the problem, there is not a leap year on century years (1700, 1800, 1900, etc.), except when it is divisible by 400 (1600, 2000, etc.). {Oh, lovely math theorems!} There, now you can impress the snooty professorial types at the next posh dinner party you attend.

WHY “LEAP”?

Leap day was so named because if a date landed on a certain day one year, say Monday, it would land on Tuesday the next, then Thursday the following, but in a leap year, the date “leaps” over a day, so over Friday onto Saturday, in this case.

AND DON’T FORGET YOUR RED PETTICOAT {in case he says no}

“In keeping with the theme of nature gone awry, a whimsical tradition dating back at least four centuries holds that leap years confer upon women the “privilege” of proposing marriage to men. The convention was (in literature, if not in reality) that any man who refused such a proposal owed his spurned suitor a silk gown and a kiss — provided she was wearing a red petticoat at the moment she popped the question.” Good to know? [This from about.com’s urban legends]

MEANWHILE, FROM THE CHALKBOARD…

So I hope you, whether it be February 29th or not, have cause to LEAP for joy! {One of my sisters-in-law is past due a few days with her first son, and I joked he was holding out for today… So I’m curious: any “leapers” out there, leap day babies?}