Friday, July 01, 2011

July Weekends


This month has five full weekends; meaning five Fridays, five Saturdays and five Sundays. Contrary to internet gibberish this does not happen only once every 823 years. In fact, on average it occurs once every 7 years, because of leap year it can happen a bit more or less frequently in a particular short term timeframe. The actual repeating pattern for any 31 day month to have five weekends is: 6 years, 5 years, 6 years, 11 years.

But back to the point, there are definitely five full weekends this month, which means precisely and exactly nothing since nearly no one plans their weekends based on whether the weekend includes only one month or is split between two.

Now there are certain OCD humanoids who have certain calendaric idiosyncrasies but I don't know of any that require weekends to fall within the same month. I am open to hearing about any phobia or compulsion around months and/or calendars in general. But specifically - July has five full weekends this year - make the most or the least of them, your choice.

I did attempt to find if there are any phenomenon that cycle every 823 years. Unfortunately the net search was clogged with all of the websites reporting this hoax about the five weekends. I myself will be doing the barbeque thing up in Sonoma for the first (American & Canadian holiday) weekend and perhaps taking to the highway during the final July weekend, more on that later.

Finally a July Blog Promise - based on feedback from the readers of this here blog. I promise, at least for one month, to have one serious and one not-so-serious post each and every week. I know the light-hearted faire troubles some of my long-time friends; just as the dense academic fodder turns off my more casual readers. In an attempt to satisfy all at least some of the time - one of each, every week this month because I have five full weekends to pull it off.

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