Monday, February 29, 2016

I Love February (2016)

So, here we are again, four years on (to the day) from my last post.

February 29th is such a fascinating day - an occasion in general limited (for most of us) to less than 25 occurrences.

And for one out of 1,461 people, it represents their birthday (on the unfounded principle of an equal number of births every day).  I don't recall having met anyone with a birthday of 29th February. I suppose that might be because I've not met 1,461 people yet.  Or perhaps it might be that I haven't asked 1,461 people what date their birthday is.

By the same token I wondered what famous events may have occurred on February 29th.  A superficial search using Google resulted in nothing of any interest. Reviewing the list found here was remarkably unremarkable. I believe the reason that interesting events happen on dates other than February 29th is because people can more readily celebrate or commemorate them if they are annual, rather than quadrennial. So, people intentionally and deliberately chose to wait an extra day (although looking at interesting events that occurred on March1st somewhat discredits this hypothesis).

So, in my own life, not much has changed in the past four years. We're now happily living in the house we began on March 1st 2012 - but there is still a little more work to do in the gardens. We did accomplish our European adventure last year, travelling for three months and experiencing a taste of European life. We've finally 'exited' from the Christchurch market, with the sale of our house and section there. I'm still working in the software industry, and experiencing new challenges as technology progresses. And - thankfully - the All Blacks won their third Rugby World Cup last year.

And tonight, I'll have a celebratory 'free beer' in anticipation of the next four years.