Once In A Blue Moon

I have a million* partially written blog posts about Christmas, New Year, tinsel and tantrums but stop press - I have just found out it will be a blue moon tomorrow night and that takes precedence I think you will agree.

What is a blue moon other than a croony 1950s love song? A blue moon is not, as I had been led to believe, a second full moon in a month, it's:

Most years have twelve full moons which occur approximately monthly, but in addition to those twelve full lunar cycles, each solar calendar year contains an excess of roughly eleven days compared to the lunar year. The extra days accumulate, so that every two or three years (on average about every 2.7154 years^[1]), there is an extra full moon. The extra moon is called a "blue moon."

Whatever, Wikipedia, it is a rare occurrence, rather like the second shag of a month or a 13th shag in a year. Hence the phrase 'once in a blue moon' (may or may not be used to describe intercourse).

To backtrack; I had been writing my 2009 'year in a nutshell' post (bet you can't wait for that one!) and one of the questions was - what did you do this year that you've never done before? I was stumped. Other than parent two children rather haphazardly I had done nothing new. I have friends - you know who you are - who could answer 'visited Croatia! Portugal! North Africa! Bolivia!' and still others who were made partners of law firms or bungee jumped off tall bridges.

I wiped two arses.

It made me a little sad that my life was full of 'maintaining'. You think you have all this time, a year in fact, but then when you break it down in to spare time it actually appears you have approximately 4 hours to yourself, in 3 minute increments. No wonder I haven't done anything of value.

Then someone said 'blue moon!' and I jumped - someone's giving me a cosmic second chance. I intend to do something tomorrow that I've never done before in my life. I just haven't thought of it yet. Hopefully it'll be winning the lottery, but it may just be eating an oyster or tickling a marmoset. I'm giving you permission to do something out of the ordinary too, just let me know.

Marmosets beware!