I’ve mentioned before that February is a weird month with only 28 or 29 days and a weird spelling. It has a weird history too.

In ancient Rome, there were only ten months, March through December. There was a gap in the wintertime that had no dates. (How weird is that?) The year was reset on the spring equinox.

Around 713 BC, Numa Pompilius added two months.  These months were not added before March. They were added after December, making February month twelve. (Weird, right?) The Roman Empire was agrarian, so spring was more important than winter.

February became the second month around 450 BC when a council of ten men called the decemvirs tried to fix everything that was wrong with Rome. (Cool, yet weird.)

All these changes did not fix the calendar. There were twelve months, but February varied from 22 to 28 days. To make March line up with the Spring Equinox, a thirteenth month called Intercalaris was occasionally added after February.

It’s amazing how the scribes knew what date to write on their work. And how annoying it must have been for the average Roman to have days added or removed from the calendar. Most people probably ran their lives by the seasons, but all these calendar changes probably affected things like tax due dates.

Julius Caesar did a mostly good job of fixing the calendar. He got rid of the thirteenth month, made February a steady 28 days, and added a leap day every four years. It wasn’t Caesar’s fault that he had too many leap days. He probably never thought that his calendar would be used for so long that it would become out of sync with the sun.

The Gregorian calendar finally fixed February’s problems and gave us the calendar we use today, with its weird second month.

Astronomers found an object in 2018 that they thought was the farthest out object in our solar system. It took three years to confirm it, but the International Astronomical Union (IAU) designated Farfarout as the farthest out object on February 10, 2021.

Yes, the farthest out object is called Farfarout. There is also a Farout, but this new object is farther out.

Farfarout is a planetoid, which is another name for an asteroid, or possibly a minor planet. Basically, an object in orbit around our sun is a planetoid.

How far out is Farfarout? Here are the amazing details:

• Farfarout was at 140 astronomical units (AU) when it was first found in 2018. (One AU is the distance from the Earth to the sun or about 93 million miles. Pluto is at 39 AU.)
• By studying its brightness, astronomers think Farfarout is roughly 250 miles wide and made of ice. That could change with more observations.
• A single orbit takes a thousand years. It’s slow-moving, which is why it took a long time to confirm its orbit.
• Farfarout has an extremely elliptical orbit moving between 27 AU and 175 AU.
• It crosses Neptune’s orbit, and the eighth planet might have flung Farfarout to its present location. It will cross Neptune’s orbit again, so all this could change in the future.
• Farfarout is not Planet 9. As the name implies, Farfarout is farther away from the sun than Planet 9, and this new planetoid is too small to help us locate the hypothesized 9th planet.
• Farfarout will eventually get a better name. Right now, it is officially known as 2018 AG37.

I found a new word that I’d like to share with you.

My best friend gave me the first six seasons of the X-Files, so Hubby and I have been watching a few episodes in the evening. We just started Season 4 last night. 

We keep the subtitles on, so when Agent Mulder used a word I’d never heard before, I immediately knew how to spell it. I googled the meaning as we continued watching the episode. When Agent Scully used the same word at the end of the episode, I decided that I had to share it. 

What is this word fitting of an X-Files episode?

Inveigle.

Merriam-Webster has two definitions for inveigle.

1. to win over by wiles: ENTICE
2. to acquire by ingenuity or flattery: WANGLE

Inveigle means to entice or wangle (wangle is another good word.) I’m going to try to add these words to my vocabulary. They’re fun to say. 

Remember, the words are out there.

Everyone knows that drinking water is a good idea. You’ve probably even heard that you should drink eight eight-ounce cups of water a day. That’s a debatable number, but water is good.

I never liked drinking water, and I never found a way to stick with it until now. Remarkably, I drink six six-ounce cups each day without any difficulty.

If you have no problem drinking lots of water, I probably should’ve been getting advice from you. I think most people have a hard time drinking a lot of water, so I’m listing what I did and how it’s improving my health and weight loss.*

1. I prefer my water at room temperature.

I always filled a water bottle and then stuck it in the fridge (where I usually forgot about it.) When I did drink it, I hated it. So, of course, I gave up.

I accidentally drank from a water bottle I’d forgotten to put in the fridge and found the water was good. So now, I fill my water bottle from the tap and let it sit out.

2. I use a straw.

I learned about this on a minimalist YouTube channel of all places. If we have to lift a cup to our mouths and tip it, we’re less likely to do so. Using a straw, we just lift and suck, or depending on where your cup is on your table, just suck. That makes it simple, so I actually drink my water.

3. I designated certain times to drink my water.

My water bottle holds twelve ounces, and my goal is to drink three bottles worth a day. On my weight loss checklist, it says that I should drink one bottle between breakfast and lunch, one between lunch and dinner, and one after dinner. I don’t drink before breakfast because that’s when I run, and there are no porta-potties on my route.

Knowing that when the bottle is empty, I don’t have to drink anymore until the next time slot makes it easier to finish a bottle. Plus, I want to drink my water at the right time because the last thing I want is to drink it all after dinner.

4. I chose a small, opaque water bottle.

I didn’t initially intend to use a water bottle I couldn’t see through. The only one I had with a straw came from the Carnival Cruise I went on in 2019. It’s not only solid, but it holds a picture of my best friend and me having a good time in Mexico. The fact that I can’t see how much water is in it actually helps me.

I don’t think about how much I have left to drink, which I would if I could see the water. Instead, I just drink throughout my designated time until I notice that it’s empty. I spend no time thinking about the water level, so it doesn’t feel like a chore.

This may sound like a lot of rules, but truly, I no longer resist drinking water. And to my great surprise, the results have been noticeable (unlike all the other times I tried to drink water regularly.)

1. The amount of soda I drink has dropped more than 50%.

I can only consume so much liquid a day, so if I am going to drink all that water, I have to drink less of other things. I used to have a 16 ounce Coke Zero with my lunch. It’s not a huge amount of soda, and it has no calories, but I know less it better. When I started my water regimen, I found that I couldn’t finish my soda. I now drink one of those cute little 7.5 ounce cans with lunch, something I never believed I would do.

2. I eat less dessert.

My main time for eating dessert was after dinner while watching TV with Hubby. Now that I have a bottle of water to get through after dinner, my desire for dessert has diminished. I keep my hand-to-mouth motion busy with my bottle, and the water fills me up.

This has been a long post, and if you read all the way to the end, I’m impressed. I’m a world-class skimmer of long posts. I’m so surprised at my sucessful water habit that I had to share all the details.

Let me know about your water habit. If you don’t have one, feel free to try any of my suggestions. Like me, you might be surprised that it works.

*Obviously, I’m not a doctor, and I’m not suggesting you do anything I say. My health mentor (she’s on YouTube) is famous for saying that we should figure out what works for us and not blindly follow other people’s rules. That’s probably why I listen to her.

Like all book lovers, I have a large TBR (to be read) pile. My unread books, fiction and non-fiction, were scattered throughout the house. Many of these books will leave my house once I read them, but I keep doing other things (like decluttering.)

When we emptied Hubby’s office, we acquired an extra bookshelf. It ended up in the bedroom, where I turned it into the perfect storage center (more about that later.)

I often read in bed, so I came up with the idea to move my unread books to the bedroom. I had extra shelf space, so this worked perfectly. To remind me that they were unread, I turned all the books upside down.

I originally planned to finish a book and set it on the shelf right side up as a visual way to see my progress. I’ve now decided that the books I finish will not go back on the TBR shelf, but I’m leaving the books upside down just because.

For fun, I’m going to take a picture of the shelf every time I finish and remove a book. I’ll be able to see my progress easier. 

I finished a book yesterday (it wasn’t very good) and started a new book today (it’s awesome!) It feels good to shrink my TBR pile. I’m not buying any print books in 2021, so I should have fewer books to move this summer. 

My ebooks TBR list is much longer (and we won’t even discuss all the audiobooks I have), but I’ll deal with them later. I might read three to five books a week, but even I have limits.

In the ongoing saga of using up the food in my pantry, I made something delicious, at least according to my hubby. 

I wanted to use a can of corn I’d had for a while (we eat fresh vegetables, not canned). Most of the recipes I found online were main dishes, like casseroles or meatloaves. They just added a can of corn which did not appeal to me. I don’t like corn in my food unless it is a corn dish.

I finally found a recipe that needed ingredients I already and, as a happy bonus, also took a can of creamed-style corn. We had one can of creamed-style corn, and I thought it would never get used because I really dislike it. So hooray for the recipe I tried.

The best part was that hubby loved it. He said it was the tastiest new recipe I’d tried. I thought it was okay but didn’t plan to fix it again. Perhaps I’ll prepare it for hubby’s birthday.

Okay, enough suspense. What did I make?

The recipe is called Jiffy Corn Casserole because it uses a Jiffy cornbread mix. It’s a type of corn pudding and has a soft consistency that you eat with a spoon.

You can find the recipe here. If you like a dish with an old-fashioned flair (I think it feels colonial) and you like a rich corn taste, I recommend this. Hubby gave it five stars. I love that it used up items in my pantry. 

We all have projects that we know we should finish, but we dread doing. My most recent one was a pile of silver I needed to polish. 

I like polishing silver, but these items were badly tarnished, and it took me almost an hour to get one large piece done. I had no desire to stand in the kitchen while cleaning silver I hadn’t used in years (thus the tarnish.)

It turned out that the silver I had kept in its box wasn’t as bad as the items that were exposed to the air. I decided that yesterday was the day to tackle this chore, but instead of standing in the kitchen, I pulled up a stool to the bathroom counter. After fifteen minutes of using silver polish (which was probably a couple of decades-old), I knew I’d never finish this way.

Lately, I’ve been finding a lot of handy advice from YouTube, so, at wit’s end, I googled how to polish silver. Real Simple had a video that suggested I use aluminum foil, baking soda, salt, and hot water. The silver in the video basically untarnished itself. I was skeptical but figured I would lose nothing but time by trying this technique. Also, I was willing to do anything that wasn’t what I was currently doing.

To my surprise and extreme pleasure, it worked.

Below you can see my “before and after” photos. I poured hot water all over my counter multiple times,  so not only was my silver polished in record time, but my counter is super clean.

Why does this work? According to the Philadelphia Museum of Art,

This type of reaction is called an electrochemical reaction because a tiny electric current flows between the silver and aluminum when the two are in contact and immersed in a baking soda solution. The addition of the baking soda improves the ease with which the electrons move between the silver and aluminum.

Wow. Very cool. I’m glad I went looking for a different technique, and I’m glad it worked. Now I can photograph these pieces and try to sell them on Facebook Marketplace. Someone else can polish them next time.

Everyone knows I love wombats. I had a farm called Wombat Farms (which had nothing to do with wombats), and I love collecting wombat memes.

Have a happy Sunday and a productive last week of February. No matter if you are feeling behind or grabbing the year with both hands, I wish you happiness and wombat cuteness.

Happy Cherry Pie Day.

I’m not a huge pie fan, but I like cherry pie. I wondered why February 20 was chosen for this holiday, and I think it is because Washington’s birthday is February 22. He has that whole chopping down the cherry tree story attached to him. And he probably liked cherry pie.

I don’t make pie anymore (I’ve made plenty in the past), but I do have two jars of cherry pie filling to use. I wrote about the jars of lemon filling that were awesome on their own. Perhaps I should test out the cherry pie filling today.

Cherry pie is the fifth most popular pie in America. Are you surprised by that? I was. The most popular is apple pie which makes sense. The next three are pumpkin, pecan, and banana cream. I can’t remember the last time I had a banana cream pie (although I would eat one if it were available.) I don’t eat pecan pie, but my mom set one out for Thanksgiving, so I saw other people eat it. It’s an interesting list.

Check out this list if you want more fun cherry-pie facts. It’s as American as apple pie.

Perseverance landed safely on Mars yesterday. It was thrilling and inspiring to watch the final minutes. If you get tired of seeing horrible things on the news, spend some time googling information about Perseverance. It’s uplifting, even as it touched down.

I think my favorite part was learning about future Mars missions. I mentioned yesterday that Perseverance would be collecting soil that will be returned to Earth. What I didn’t mention was that Perseverance itself was not sending the samples back to Earth. It will collect the material, put it in uber-clean vials, and leave it on the Mars surface. A different lander will pick up the vials and return them to Earth. This mission hasn’t left yet, and it will be many years before we get the samples back home. I think it is awesome that NASA is thinking so far in the future.

The best part is, by the time the Mars samples return to Earth, the next generation of scientists will be the ones to study it. If you know STEM kids in middle or high school right now, they might be the ones working in the 2030s with the samples collected this year. Thanks to rovers like Perseverance and a positive outlook of the decades to come, today’s budding scientists have a bright future.

One of my favorite comics is Strange Planet, and today’s panel was perfect.