As a tribute to her decision and strong will there are (at least) two people who have told me that they are planning to challenge themselves physically while Emily is at bootcamp in the hope of supporting her from afar.  Frankly, I’m “challenged” all the time so I’m just going to keep on keeping on (except I’ll be dealing with the extra added bummer of not being to talk to Emily for a while).  So, if anyone would like to add their support in any way feel free to explain yourself in the comments section.

While Emily is gone I’ll be scanning and posting her letters, keeping us apprised of her weird world that she’ll be joining.  Its also possible that I’ll be doing a little posting here and there if I just can’t help myself.  Other than that we’ll be counting down until she returns…

66 days left (give or take)

C+E

Yikes.

Does that sound like a good plan Emily?

I looked it up online, and apparently, they are trying to promote their new sliders, but whatever marketing genius came up with the term “burger shots” needs to be fired. Immediately. I mean, not only is the idea of “shooting” any form of a burger completely nauseating, but they come in a “six-pack” because, clearly, just one alcoholic-beverage reference was not cool enough.

Huh.

I’ve been slacking on my fashion sales sites, K Dukes is not inspiring me, and today’s news – the earthquake in Haiti – is tragic but not controversial…I’m at a loss. I guess I could just post a bunch of pictures of my cat doing cute things with a hackey sack…or not…hey, what’s everyone else doing right now?!

• There are a number of different definitions of a blue moon, the most accepted being the 13th full moon in a year, occurring once every two to three years. The Farmers’ Almanac follows the rule of the extra (fourth) full moon in a season, and the definition of the blue moon as the second full moon in one month stems from a 1946 interpretation error, revealed in the May 2009 issue of Sky & Telescope. (In case you missed the May issue, here’s the article.)

• The moon before the blue moon is called a betrayer moon, because it was seen as coming ahead of its appropriate time (the blue moon was one appearing at the right time, then?) and thus confusing the clergy when they were trying to determine the dates for Lent and Easter, which apparently were based on the dates of the full moon.

• An interesting list of the traditional English names (e) for full moons, based on the Gregorian calendar, followed by the Native American (na) names, based on an older method of dating full moon according to seasons:

January: old moon (e), wolf moon (na)
February: wolf moon (e), snow moon (na)
March: lenten moon (e), worm moon (na)
April: egg moon (e), pink moon (na)
May: milk moon (e), flower moon (na)
June: flower moon (e), strawberry moon (na)
July: hay moon (e), buck moon (na)
August: grain moon (e), sturgeon moon (na)
September: corn moon (e), harvest moon (na)
October: harvest moon (e), hunter’s moon (na)
November: hunter’s moon (e), beaver moon (na)
December: oak moon (e), cold moon (na)

• Finally, here is a handy equation you can use to calculate the dates of future full moons (all full moons, not just blue moons):

where d is the number of days since 1 January 2000 00:00:00 in the time scale known as Terrestial Time. For Universal Time (world clock time) add the following approximate correction to d:

days

and where N is an integer number of full moons, starting with 0 for the first full moon of the year 2000. The true time of a full moon may differ from this approximation by up to about 14.5 hours as a result of the non-circularity of the moon’s orbit.

The next time the blue moon will fall on New Year’s Eve is 2028, at which time there will also be a full lunar eclipse! Whoa! (I did not calculate this myself, although I feel like we should test this equation to make sure mathematician Jean Meeus is correct.)