Ways to Celebrate Leap Day

After hitting 13 French Quarter music venues during my 5 days in New Orleans for Mardi Gras (see my earlier post)—not to mention experiencing the fabulous street bands—I am reminded of the excusable wrongheadedness of the youthful Dorothy Gale's proclamation, "There's no place like home," unless she means home as a state of mind.

Speaking of states of mind, happy Leap Day, with my sympathy to people born on February 29 who at age 60 insist they are only 15 years old. Here are some curiosities about leap year:

• The term for people born on February 29 is leaplings.
• Taiwan and Hong Kong have legally settled official birthdays for leaplings in common years, though they disagree on the date (Taiwan for February 28, and Hong Kong for March 1).
• We have a 1 in 1,461 chance (0.068446%) of being born on leap day. We have a 1 in 365.2422 chance (0.273789%) of being born on any other day.
• To say a year contains 365.25 days is imprecise; in fact, there are 365.2422. We will compensate for the inexactness of adding a leap day every four years by dropping it in the centennial years of 2100, 2200, and 2300, but not in 2400.

This all seems to me like much ado about something. Precision matters. So here are ways to celebrate Leap Day, if Mardi Gras has not worn you out: Do everything in quarters today. Drink only four ounces of that pint of beer and pour the rest in your buddy's mug. Eat one meatball and put the other three in the refrigerator for tomorrow. Speak only one sentence for every three you hear. Read three minutes for every minute you watch television. But do not send one-fourth of payments due to your creditors, unless you don't mind late charges.