Friday, February 29, 2008

As if this winter hasn’t been long enough, we get an extra day of it on Friday with February 29th. As a kid, I marveled at the concept that you could be born on the 29th and only see your birthday three times by the time you were twelve. Now I’m just disillusioned with the people who set up our calendar system. What kind of a mistake is it that causes you to have to add an extra day to everyone’s life and schedule every four years? It just doesn’t seem professional. I still think that those kids born on the 29th are getting gypped out of presents (I think gypped might be derogatory towards gypsies). I want to know that their parents figured out some way to “hook them up.”

I don’t know about you, but I don’t get paid extra for the 29th. I’m thinking of calling in sick, doing a sub-par job, slacking, or all of the above. In reality, I am unable to call in sick or slack, try as I might. One could argue that from time to time I do a sub-par job, but it is never due to a lack of trying. Try as I might, I can’t seem to shake this work ethic that I have been imbued with. Quite frankly, it’s often a burden and always ends up with me not getting my five weeks of allotted vacation time every year. I am trying to be better about that, and the quality of “best of” shows gives me hope that one day in the near future, I’ll be able to take a vacation and actually relax.

I guess I might be looking at this extra day thing as a glass that’s half full. I suppose it’s also an extra day to get stuff done (like your taxes), put off a payment that’s due March 1st, or if you’re on death row, it’s an extra day before your gluttonous last meal. I always marvel at the appetites of those about to die. I think that I would be too nervous to eat, but most condemned inmates order up fried chicken, steak, shrimp, pizza, milk shakes, pie, coffee, Dr. Pepper and every other thing that they can think of. I suppose that’s when you really need comfort food. I’m thinking that they haven’t invented the comfort food that’s going to make me feel easy about getting a lethal injection. Maybe that’s where they got the term “to die for.”