08/09/10
This August has 5 Sundays, 5 Mondays and 5 Tuesdays, all in one month. It happens once in 834 years. At exactly 6 minutes and 7 seconds after 5 o'clock today, August 9th, 2010, it will be 05:06:07 08/09/10. This won't happen again until the year 3010. Somehow it makes me smile that this is happening today, which marks nine years since my Mom's death.
But wait! According to Snopes, Bill is correct about August.
Thanks to puddle for the link and to Catreona for bringing it to my attention!
And we all know Howard Dean is first.
ReplyDeletePretty neat, listener.
ReplyDeleteAyup. And antediluvian that I am, I hew to the proposition that PowerPoint poisons the mind. It dramatically reduces the information content (not that people accustomed to TV news would notice) as well as the intellectual interaction and spontaneity of pre-PowerPoint lectures. Case in point: Colin Powell's Power Point presentation to the UN Security Council on Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" (with the added obscenity of the drapery over Picasso's Guernica. If memory serves me well, Fidel Castro overthrew the Batista dictatorship starting with 9 men and 7 rifles after the Granma landing, but without PowerPoint. The "experts" at the Department of State and the Pentagon, with the aid of PowerPoint, couldn't see that their adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan were foredoomed to failure. Betcha William Tecumseh Sherman wouldn't have been that foolish, not by a long shot. End of rant.
ReplyDeleteCleaned the swimming pool a bit more today, picked peaches (we're been picking from the tree in our back yard for about a week now), started assembling our new computer desk, and in chatting with Apple sales folks discovered that they are awfully liberal about the educational discount. I was adjunct faculty at the local junior college for a couple of years maybe 15 years ago, and they said that was enough. Miyoko was a bilingual instructional aide at a couple of high school districts, and that is enough. OK with me.
I have never had luck with grafting, but our peach trees are getting old and several major limbs are finished. Think I will cut one back to little more than a stump this winter and try grafting again. It would be a shame to waste a good bole and root system. I have seen orchards renewed by cutting back to stumps and grafting other varieties. It could be that my grafts failed in part because the plant hormones secreted by the growing tips killed them. Discovered that a certain kind of big black bee (like a bumble bee) we have around here bores holes into rotten wood. That was a surprise to me.
TTFN
That weird pillow I bought, combined with a determination to sleep on my side (after more than 60 years' sleeping on my back) really seems to have worked. Miyoko says still no more snoring, and I don't suffer from daytime drowsiness as I used to. Good result, and far superior to the high tech medical intervention that had been suggested by my oncologist.
ReplyDeleteThat's probably what they call a Carpenter Bee, Alan. They're the only ones I know that'll sting for no reason at all.
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised your oncologist immediately suggested CPAP. At one point when I was doing medical journalism I covered the meeting of the Association of American Sleep Societies, and I was left with the distinct impression that the first suggestion was something like your pillow. Of course, an oncologist is not a sleep specialist.
ReplyDeleteI'm confused about the August thing. It seems to me that August 1 should fall on a Sunday once every 7 years, not once every 834. And, of course, if teh first of a 31-day month falls on a Sunday, that month will have 5 Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays before it's over.
ReplyDeleteIn between doing a bit of teaching prep work and doing my water workout, I thought I'd try to say something about what's going on in my life. But I can't seem to find the right compromise between generic whining and sharing information that is too personal and detailed to post in a public forum. So I think I'll just go with the "exploding head" graphic (the least graphic one I could find).
ReplyDeleteBecause of leap year it's not every seven. . . . Snopes does the math: http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/trivia/august.asp
ReplyDeleteHallo All ♥
ReplyDeleteDeep breaths, Renee. Take care of yourself in the midst of the fray; everything is harder when you don't have good sleep and nutrition. At least it's something you may have a little control over.
Alan, that's interesting about your pillow. I generally need to switch from side to back after awhile because otherwise I can get a sore shoulder. It's always something. ;-)
Yesterday I learned from a bee keeper that native plants are wind pollinated while plants brought in from afar need bees for pollination. I'd never heard that distinction before.
Bill, I got the information from my niece who got it from her company's tax vendor. Whatever the configuration of the Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays, at 5:06:07 today (both this morning's and this evening's) today will be 05:06:07 08/09/10. :-)
Snopes agrees with me: On average, it's once every 7 years. Although because of leap year, it's not exactly every seventh year. But we all knew that.
ReplyDeleteYes, and it's perfectly true that we won't see that precise sequence again until 3010. But next year there will be a second when it's 06:07:08 09/10/11.
ReplyDeleteDon't apologize for the rant, Alan. It was interesting, and right on the money as far as I'm concerned.
ReplyDeleteAlso interesting about the grafting. Let us know how it turns out.
2110, 2210, 2310, 2410, &c. . . .
ReplyDelete*hug* Renee
ReplyDeletePatricia Neal died today. She was eighty-four.
ReplyDeleteI saw that. Tough lady *she* was. . . .
ReplyDeleteAll I can say is that adolsxcence is hard on the whole family. Penny and I originally planned to have two kids, spaced 6 years apart. But when Marc was 6 we weren't in a financial position to have another kid. And by the time we felt financially secure, Marc was a teenager. I couldn't face the idea of going through that again wen I was in my 60s.
ReplyDeleteOops. I should have said, "until 2110."
ReplyDeleteCOOL!
ReplyDeleteI still love that it happened on my Mon's "feast day."
ReplyDeleteHi! Maybe I will look up wild bees of California and see if I can identify the big black ones we have; they aren't aggressive at all.
ReplyDeleteMust be Xylocopa californica, the California carpenter bee.
ReplyDeleteWikipedia: "Female carpenter bees are capable of stinging, but they are docile and rarely sting unless caught in the hand or otherwise directly provoked."
I have never seen this type of bee any other place I have lived. Thanks for the information!