Go to the Water

2024 is a leap year, a calendar year with an extra, "leap day" - February 29th. It takes approximately 365.25 days for the earth to orbit the sun. Someone, centuries ago, decided to round the days down to 365 each year and every four years have a leap year. If leap year was not added we would have what they call, calendar drift. Simply put, after one century without a leap day, summer wouldn't start until mid-July.    I am one of those people that just takes for granted what happened centuries ago and I just go with it, giving it very little thought. I am not a history person at all, and ancient history is even further down the list of my interests. I am just going with the fact that every four years we catch up.  I liked the saying calendar drift; I feel we are starting to get calendar drift in every season. It seems like there is a season within a season. For example, January was frigid for a week and then during the last week we enjoyed a splash of spring. How can it c...

As you are aware, a good majority of my blog topics come from listening to the news, and this one is no different. I found this interview very interesting; it was a discussion on helping children to decide about getting an education. The speaker spoke about going to university and then at the end she said, "not all roads lead to University".  Some people are meant to go to university, and some aren't. University minded people enjoy taking courses and studying. They create educational milestones for themselves, and they work hard to achieve them. There are others that have decided to get a one and done degree because they had a specific job in mind. Then there are people that go directly into the trades and what on earth would we do without them.    There are also the people that struggled to graduate from High School. School was hard for them, and they were relieved to be done. We all know someone that has had very little formal education yet is an amazing problem solver ...

How I describe a "Dig Deep" moment is; one of those times when you want to turn and run, and you know you can't. It is when a person must do something extremely hard either mentally or physically and they find the strength to do it. It is an experience where you think that you "can't" but you know you "can", because you dig deep.   The list could be very long of examples of people that push themselves on a regular basis. For an athlete it is to push hard to pull off a win or to gather the needed strength in an overtime situation. There are people that put in incredibly long work hours, yet they are able to keep focused and continue to be productive. I think of the emergency crews or law enforcement that spend endless hours at an emergency scene, doing their jobs as the hours go on. Or, how about the farmer who continues to sit in the tractor for hours on end because the weather is not favorable, or because it must get done.  I am going to share a s...

  I have always been fascinated by "Mensa". I thought that if you tested your IQ and it was very high, you were Mensa. I have since learned that Mensa is an organization. It  was founded in England in 1946 to serve as a round-table society for highly intelligent people to meet monthly. It is now an international organization with over 150,00 members throughout 100 countries. Mensa is open to people who have an IQ score within the upper 2% of the general population on an approved intelligence test. Someone qualifying for Mensa has an IQ higher than 130, Albert Einstein's IQ was 160.   I was curious as to what an average IQ was, and on average it is about 100. There are several factors involved in determining IQ which include: memory, math skills, reasoning ability, processing speed, language and vocabulary and visuospatial processing which is like keeping track of the location of moving objects. The most interesting part is that IQ is compared to other people the same...

February is known as the month of Love. It is a Hallmark, flower, jewelry and candy store financial windfall. I thought that February 14th would be a big day for weddings. I was surprised to learn that in Canada, getting married on February 14th is no higher than any other day of the year.  I found some other interesting facts about marriage. Canadian married couples are 20.6% of the population, with common-law couples are 19.1%. The percentage of married couples in Canada has declined from 83% in 1980 to 64.6% to date. The mean age for first marriage is 30.7 years. Nunavut has the lowest marriage rate; PEI has the highest.  My business partner and I spent a Sunday together and took on the orders for "Cookies and Candy by May and Faye". Valentine's Day is a fun day to cut out cookies and candy into hearts. The decorating was endless and with the help of Dollarama it all looked so pretty. The support for our little business is nothing short of amazing and we are having suc...