I think Leap Day is cool.  No matter what claim any other day can make, no day is more rare — we’ll all have fewer February 29ths in our lives than any other day, and we’re currently experiencing one of them.

I love how well it works out, mathematically, too.  I think the convention of adding in a day once every four years (except when it’s divisible by 100, but then except when it’s divisible by 1000) is brilliant, and it’s amazing that it works out as well as it does (never mind the “leap seconds” we need to add in every so often) and that humanity as a whole is willing to adopt something that we generally understand the need for only theoretically and seems kind of weird and arbitrarty if you think about it.

I think Leap Day should be used for adventures.  I think it should be spent doing something out of the ordinary, fun and memorable.  It’s a day for climbing mountains, skiing for the first time, skipping school to watch movies all day or hopping on a plane and heading to a random destination.  We only get a few in our lives (this is my ninth) and I think they should be spent on special things.

We did none of that today.  My boys are still sick and I’m exhausted.  We stayed home, we watched tv.  We didn’t do a single thing that could be described as adventurous — we didn’t even leave the house today.  (Well, Dan did — he went to work.)  I wish we’d been able to do something special for the boys’ first Leap Day.  We’re going to have to have a “Leap Day Observed” in our house.  We’ll have to pick a day, sometime soon, when everyone is healthy, to do something extraordinary.  I’m bummed that we weren’t able to do that today, but it’ll be special on another day, too.