A President's Day Rant, and an iPod Rave

President's day. It's a day that we supposedly recognize the presidents who served our country in years past. A noble purpose, but the date on which it falls is somewhat ill-conceived.

The birthday of America's 16th President, Abraham Lincoln, is on February 12th. The birthday of our first President, George Washington, is (on our Gregorian calendar) is on February 22nd. Before President's Day came along, the birthdays of these two leaders of this country were observed separately. This meant no school, no mail delivery, no garbage collection, etc. on both days. But someone in their bright mind (note the sarcasm) thought it would be good to combine the two observances, and observe them both on the third Monday in February, which means only one day with no school, etc. I think it's a dumb idea to combine two birthday observances into one holiday for the purposes of removing one "no work day" from the calendar. Especially when it's considered that, like in this year, when George Washington's birthday is so close to President's day, his birthday is usually not observed. How would you feel if your birthday, which at one time is declared as a national day of observance, is no longer observed because your birthday is so close to that of another, whose birthday was also declared as a national day of observance?

I mentioned the Gregorian calendar explicitly before because George Washington was born on February 11, 1731 (Old Style, i.e. Julian Calendar). In 1752, when Great Britain imposed the now-worldwide Gregorian calendar (which was introduced in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII) in its nation and its territories and possessions (which included the American colonies), George's birthday was not only moved forward 11 days, but a year was added (In the old style, New Year's Day was on March 25th, so 3/24/1731 would be followed by 3/25/1732. New Style forced New Year's Day to fall on January 1st, which is more logical to have it at the beginning of a month instead of near the end but not quite at the end).

Enough ranting. I have another story. On Saturday, my mom tells me that we're going to be looking at iPods. I take her to the Apple Store on 5th Avenue to basically show her what it looks like and what the iPod's features are. We end up walking out of the store having bought an iPod and a case for it. It's a black 80GB 5.5G iPod. It's my second iPod, and with my music AND videos, I've only filled it up only 1/8th of the total capacity.

I'm now starting to load games onto my iPod. I also have a few photos of both my iPods playing the same song at the same time. I'm also getting some new accessories.