Calculating Milestones in Days.

Every once in a while here in blogworld, someone will write a post about some sort of milestone in their lives (i.e. birthday, anniversary etc.) and make a comment about the exact # of days they have been alive or married or whatever. The problem is, each time I have read such a comment, the exact number of days has been incorrect.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. Let's say someone is celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary today. That means they were married December 18th, 1986. Perhaps they want to post about it. They might take out a calculator and multiply 365 by 25 and get a product of  9125 days. They might say we've been married 9125 days today.

That is not correct.

There are 2 mistakes that are being made. 1 is obvious and 1 not so obvious. Actually, both are obvious to me. Let's see if either one is obvious to you.

First, a little thing I like to call Lauren's birthday. Lauren is a sweet girl in our co-op. She has had 2 birthdays, and will have her third next year. The thing is, Lauren's 11. That's right, her birthday is on Leap Day.  The above calculation did not take into account the  extra day every 4 years that leap year produces.

The next mistake is based on the method used for counting days. Let's say you were born at 11:00 p,m. today. At midnight, it is the next day, and although you have been alive for 1 hour, you have lived on 2 different days.

This is the mistake I see people make when they are counting days by year. They don't count the day of the event they are commemorating. For example, I was born on 9/23/64. On 9/23/65 I had lived in all or some of 366 days, not 365.

If you are not totally confused already, let me teach you a sure fire method of counting the exact number of days (including parts of the 1st and last day) that you are commemorating. If you are totally confused, go do a Charlie Brown: pound your head against a tree, and say I can't stand it. You could also, as Amy is apt to point out,  do a Miss Piggy and say, "I don't understand any of this."   I'll wait.

Welcome back those of you returning from the tree, or your Miss Piggy impersonation.

In order to calculate the exact amount of days you have been involved in something, you need to know 2 things:

1) The current day.
2) The date you are counting from.
3) How many days are in each month. (access to a calendar will suffice.)

Here's our test case:

Amy and I were married on Apri l 11th 1998.

I want to know how many days (full and partial) we have been married, here is what I do . . .

1) Starting with April 11th 1998 I count out 4 year periods as 1461 days (365 per year times 4 plus one leap day.

April 11th 1998 - April 10th 2002 1461
April 11th 2002 - April 10th 2006 1461
April 11th 2006 - April 10th 2010 1461

2) Since April 10th 2010 is less than 4 years before today, I count out years as 365 days, unless there was a leap day and then I count it as 366.

April 11th 1998 - April 10th 2002 1461
April 11th 2002 - April 10th 2006 1461
April 11th 2006 - April 10th 2010 1461
April 11th 2010- April 11th 2011 365

3) When I get to where there is less than a year left til the current date, I just count out the remaining days by months. This includes the rest of April 2011 and the days that have taken place so far this month..

There are 30 days in April and I have already accounted for the first 10 in 2011. This means there are 20 more to put in our rendering. Today is December 18th. So the amount of days Amy and I have been married can be tallied like this:

April 11th 1998 - April 10th 2002                         1461

April 11th 2002 - April 10th 2006                         1461

April 11th 2006 - April 10th 2010                         1461

April 11th 2010- April 11th 2011                            365

April 11th 2011 - April 30th 2011                             20
May 2011                                                                 31
June 2011                                                                 30
Ju;y 2011                                                                  31
Aigust 2011                                                               31
September 2011                                                        30
October 2011                                                            31
November 2011                                                        30
December 1st to Dec 18 2011                                   18

4) Add all the numbers together

1461
1461
1461
0365
0020
0031
0030
0031
0031
0030
0031
0030
0018
5000


That means that as of today Amy and I have been married 5000 days. Wow, imagine that! The day I picked to do a tutorial on calculating milestones, was actually a milestone itself. I think I'll take her out to celebrate. Actually, I have been using this calculation for years and chose today because it is our 5000th day of marriage.  I am taking Amy on a secret surprise date to commemorate the occasion.

This explanation serves 3 purposes

1) The next time someone posts about blogging for 3650 days when they have actually been at it 3653, I will simply send them the link to this post.

2) To communicate to you what Amy has been putting up with  for 5000 days.

3) To commemorate an average day as a momentous occasion for the woman I love. I am touched by the holiday symmetry of this occasion. Our first day of marriage was the Saturday prior to Easter in 1998. Today, Day 5000, is a week before Christmas 2011. Amy is a lot like Mary Poppins, in that every day is a Jolly Holiday with her.

Thursday 2 Questions @ Self Sagacity

I am not participating in Thursday 2 Questions. But that doesn't mean you can't check it out.

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Here's a puppyism that I heard at math today:

8 + 3, I don't need to use the number line, I can use my brain.

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HSBA Featured Winner

Ana Braga-Henebry's Journal - Best Super Homeschooler.

This is really a super homeschool blog.  It's interesting, informative, personal and loaded with variety.

Here is a Sample Post.

A Picture is worth 200 Posts

Click here for more Wordless Wednesday

Speaking of Wordless,my HSBA spotlight blog is Mothership Adventures who won for best pictures.  They travel the country in an r.v which is cool enough.  The pictures are fantastic.  Here is a sample post.

As the title indicated, this is my 200th post with pictures in it. 

Carnival of Homeschooling at Teach Beside Me

This weeks COH is up at Teach Beside Me. They have included my post on what happens at a FLL scrimmage in their mix.  Spider Droid's FLL tournament is Saturday. Here is a video that was at Why Home School  posted last month that shows a table run.

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Renee Abramowitz of School Sparks sent me a copy of her new e-book Christmas Worksheets For Santa's Little Helpers.

Here is  an page from the e-book with Christmas sight words.

Puppy and I are going to have fun doing many of these worksheets in the days to come.  Feel free to go to Renee's site and explore the many fine worksheets she has there and download the book for yourself.  Did I mention it was free?

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Best Variety is the featured category of my HSBA recap today.  The winner was Heartkeeper Common Room, a blog I have appreciated for a long time now.  This post does have an eclectic mix which I hope you will enjoy.  Here is a Sample Post.

Next Time: Obligatory Christmas Tree Post

Thanks Swimming!

I love t-shirts and would love to have one that says "I brake for symmetry".

I am always looking for book ends to catalog my life .  One such moment of symmetry appeared to me when our family was picking up my oldest niece in South Bend to bring her back to the Chicago area for Thanksgiving.  I invited our niece to go swimming with us in our hotel.  This was on Tuesday, two days before Thanksgiving.  I realized that my younger sister had invited our niece as well as our family to go swimming with her 2 days after Thanksgiving.  So I', thinking swimming, Thanksgiving, swimming and it came to me, Thankswimming.

Here's A Recap . . .

Thankswimming Day 1

 

Then after drying off,

leaving the hotel,

inspecting the dorm,

Catching The Muppet Premiere,

 

Eating,

and waiting

for the tryptophan to kick in.

We were ready for . . .

 Thankswimming Day 2

This summer, my older kids started going off the diving board.  The problem was, every time I tried to take a picture of them, I would get this . . .

and then this . . .

This year, no doubt due to the miracle that is Thankswimming, I got this . . .

and this . . .



and even this . . .

All this  while Puppy paddled.

In short Thankswimming

made a big splash!

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Today's featured HSBA category is Best Homemaking or Recipes Blog.  This years winner, The Happy Lil' Homemaker seems to have a lot of great recipes like the one I saw today fro Spritz Cookies.  I was surprised that they didn't have any Thankswimming recipes.  Although this  Sample Post does look delectable.

Sunday's Cool HOF Edition

Sunday's Cool!
A Link Up and A Look Ahead

A Link Up: Crazy Uncle Dave's sports blog had some exciting Ron Santo news this week.  I hope you enjoy 1 down 2 to go.

A look Ahead: Another busy week in real life life that will culminate with Spider Droid's Robotics tournament.  Here on the blogosphere will be busy as well with some posts featuring the carnivals and meme's I participate in.  I will also continue featuring HSBA winners at the end of each post.

For instance, today we will look at the Laugh With Us Blog which was the winner of funniest home school blog.  As another blog, that gets it's bread   and butter from quoting family member's crazy sayings, I must say I heartily approve.  Here is a sample post. 

Next Time:Thankswimming