Leap Day

It’s February 29 - Leap Day!

Why am I excited? Well, for one thing, I now have an additional day to meet my upcoming writing deadlines. I’m currently proofreading my July Harlequin Romantic Suspense story, UNDERCOVER SOLDIER, and also have a Pet Rescue Mystery manuscript due in a few weeks. An extra day is a good thing.

I used to worry about the reason for leap year. Apparently it takes our beloved planet Earth 365 days and approximately 6 hours to rotate around the sun, which means that a year is actually slightly more than 365 days. The extra day in a leap year is the compilation of those 6-hour increments over 4 years. Sounds easy and rather ingenious. Otherwise, how would we ever keep track of where we were in a year that included the extra few hours? Boggles my mind.

More important to me these days are the traditions of leap day. No, I didn’t propose to my husband on leap day. I suppose it’s still traditional for a man to propose to a woman except on leap day, but I suspect that today’s savvy and outgoing women do a lot of proposing themselves, even in years that don’t even contain a leap day.

At times, I wish I’d been born on leap day. Just imagine what it would be like to be only a quarter of your age. Okay, I realize it doesn’t work that way. Those who have February 29 as a birthday probably choose early on whether to celebrate it on February 28 or March 1. Apparently most states choose March 1 as the date when drivers’ licenses are issued to leap babies who turn driving age.

Yes, I’ve done a little research here. The chances of being a leap baby are apparently 1 in 1500. There are close to 190,000 people in the U.S. who were born on leap day, and around 4 million in the whole world.

By the way, not all years divisible by four are leap years. The years a new century begins are only leap years if the number of years is divisible by 400. That’s because the rotation is 365 days and approximately 6 hours. The additional quirk is to compensate for that “approximately.”

There has to be a story here somewhere. A mystery that can be solved only on leap day. Or someone gets murdered on leap day. Or--well, I’m still thinking about that.

What’s your opinion of leap day? Anything exciting, like a marriage proposal, planned?