It's a bonus day in the calendar this year. Leap Year, as it has come to be known, is an attempt to adjust the calendar. This explanation from the scientists may help:
"A calendar year is typically 365 days long. These so called 'common years' loosely define the number of days it takes the Earth to complete one orbit around the Sun. But 365 is actually a rounded number. It takes Earth 365.242190 days to orbit the Sun, or 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes and 56 seconds. This 'sidereal' year is slightly longer than the calendar year, and that extra 5 hours 48 minutes and 56 seconds needs to be accounted for somehow. If we didn’t account for this extra time, the seasons would begin to drift. This would be annoying if not devastating, because over a period of about 700 years our summers, which we’ve come to expect in June in the northern hemisphere, would begin to occur in December!
"By adding an extra day every four years, our calendar years stay adjusted to the sidereal year. . ."
There's additional "fixing" that goes on to make finer adjustments, but you get the idea. All I know is that today I have an additional day to post another offering.
What I know is this, as we look forward to "springing forward" an hour in our clocks - the sun always wins as the seasons change in the Northern Hemisphere. No one greets that reality with more verve and sheer joy than me. When will that change occur? Daylight Savings kicks in this year on May 10th. It's a Sunday, so we turn our clocks ahead by one hour.
Daylight saving time, also referred to as daylight savings time, daylight time, or summer time, is the practice of advancing clocks to make better use of the longer daylight available during summer, so that darkness falls at a later clock time. Then we reverse course in the fall and "fall back" an hour on Sunday, November 3rd this year.
Seems we're always tinkering with this or that, doesn't it?
I know this for sure: I love the full moons each month. I live in "dark sky" country at night. I open the blinds and allow the moonlight to fill the bedroom. And I love it as I observe the sun moving further north a little bit each day as it rises in the morning. The changes of season are evidence to me of an all-wise Heavenly Father, whose creations never cease to amaze me.
I am particularly grateful to live in a day when science has advanced to the place where it is now. I was informed a few weeks back after a visit to my regular dentist, Dr. Cox, that I needed a root canal. The filling he had just provided went deep into the nerves in the tooth, and he recommended the additional procedure as a precaution against further damage. So I relied on son Jake's expertise (he provides marketing services for dentists), and he came up with a recommendation for an outstanding dentist nearby in Midway, who happens to love doing root canals. (Dr. Schmutz at the Prince Dental Group, if you need a good recommendation - I give him all five stars!) I was in and out of his office in an hour. State-of-the-art dentistry at its best. I suppose in the days of yesteryear the solution might have been an extraction just to deal with the problem, but now I still have my tooth, pain is eliminated, and science has prevailed.
Speaking of medical science, I am scheduled for a colonoscopy next week. (I know, "TMI"). I picked up my preparatory laxative yesterday. It's no wonder we all live longer these days. It seems there isn't a stone left unturned in my decaying mortal body that doesn't come in for scrutiny by someone these days. Next up will be another post-op check-in to see if my brain is still working. . . (oh boy).
It's the nature of the beast for me, and I suppose it's just all part of checking all the boxes for old men.
It's also a reminder to me that my season of life is changing, and not always in a fun way either.
Thanks to Melatonin, I still have my dreams to keep me company. The other night I dreamt about being in bed with Patsy basking in the moonlight together, and that dream wiped out every other thought about root canals, colonoscopies, and brain dysfunction.
God is so good to me.
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