Hey February, I can’t say it’s been a pleasure, but I’m ready to move on. I must confess that February brought back a little bit longer days, but I’m ready to say farewell to the month with my annual “good riddance, February” blog.
Every month has its ups and downs, but unless you’re a Valentine’s Day or Groundhog fanatic, February is pretty much an awful month. The weather is always pretty crappy, it’s name is hard to spell, unless you’re a sports fan that likes basketball, after the Super Bowl, you’re out of luck in February, and on average, February is the snowiest month in the United States according to the National Weather Service.
But enough complaining — at least February has National Drink Wine Day and National Margarita Day — making it officially a good month for drinking. Tomorrow is March, and the beginning of an eleven month stretch of months without a February.
We’re still dealing with COVID issues, but the weather is getting better and the days are getting longer and we’ve got daylight saving coming up.
So here we go with the third month of the year, or if you’re really old, like born before 150 B.C., it’d be the first month. According to the old Roman calendars, a year was ten months long, beginning with March and ending in December. I’ve mentioned before that originally, January and February didn’t even deserve a spot on the calendar — they were just lumped together and called “winter.” That still appeals to me.
But in addition to better weather and more daylight, I like some other things about March — even though I’m not particularly a basketball fan, I look forward to March Madness, the college basketball tournament. I’m not sure where I read this, but the number of vasectomies surges by 50 percent during the first week of March Madness!! Supposedly the reason is that patients typically need at least a day with ice to keep swelling down, so if they’re going to spend a whole day doing nothing, it’s not hard to figure that they’d want to do it on a day they’d like to be sitting from of the television watching basketball. I guess this falls into the category of “believe it or don’t” but it’s interesting.
While we’re on the subject of strange/interesting things, on the 1st of March, 2007, a detachment of 170 Swiss infantrymen accidentally invaded neighboring Liechtenstein when they got lost on a training mission. Luckily, after explaining the mistake to Liechtenstein, the Swiss army was given directions and returned home safely.
I know May has Cinco De Mayo Day, but March has Cinco De. Marcho – a 12-day drinking regimen for anyone that wishes to “train one’s liver for the closing ceremonies on St. Patrick’s Day.” And we can all look forward to Pi Day, St. Patrick’s Day and the Vernal Equinox — and of course, we can’t forget (even if we’d like to) the day in March that Twitter was founded — March 21, if you’re interested.
As the saying goes, March comes “in like a lion, out like a lamb” — or — the other way around. No matter what tomorrow brings, it’s March — not February.