Happy Leap Day!

What's wrong with this picture?

Leap Day is winding down as I type this.  I hope you had enough February 29th to last you for a while.  I do enjoy that Leap Day William has actually become a thing so recently after being introduced on 30 Rock.  The interwebs are full of explanations about why we have a Leap Day.  Speaking for myself, I’m pretty comfortable with the concept.  I’ve been around for nine of them and just missed a tenth one by a couple of months.  (Technically I was around for that tenth one too, but all of the hub-bub was muffled by amniotic fluid.)

What has me freaked out is the Leap Second that is coming up this year.

Thanks, Hank Green. Just what I need, another problem to lose sleep over. There have been dozens of these damned things, and nobody has bothered to bring it up before?!? Why is this not a bigger deal?


We can plan for a Leap Day.  You just go through another day, like you did the day before and like you will do the day after.  How does one handle a Leap Second?  What if you are in mid-conversation at 7:59:59 on June 30th (EST)?  Do you try to squeeze in an extra second of dialogue?  Do you sneak in a word that you wouldn’t use in an ordinary second? (My vote is for “humunculus.”) How about a longer breath between sentences or an awkward pause before contributing your part of the conversation?  Maybe just throw in an unnecessary “um” or “ya know” in there, ya know, to irritate some public speaking coach that may be passing by.



What about TV programming?  This will be Prime Time on a Saturday night.  Do I have to wait an extra second before watching that summertime rerun of Holmes on Homes?  What will happen with that second?  A clever, yet brief advertisement?  Dead Air?  A very quick rendition of the National Anthem being played over a rapidly waving flag?



How do I set my watch?  For a Leap Day I just roll over the date.  In fact, Leap Days make keeping track of dates on my watch even easier.  I only have to go from the 30th to the 1st, instead of the usual 29th to the first I’m forced to endure any other March.  (Yes, I am familiar with digital watches.) But what about Leap Seconds?  I don’t have ready access to the US Naval Observatory Master Clock.  I have exactly two trusted sources for correct time: Verizon and Apple.  Will they observe the Leap Second?  And what about actually setting my watch to the correct second?  It's easier said than done. Do I push the button exactly at 8:00:00 or should I account for human reaction time and the time lost actually engaging the mechanism? 7:59:59 ... 7:59:58??? When do I push the button? Of course I could practice this, but the whole point is to minimize the stress of correctly setting a watch.


I think I have broken the backslash%question mark key on my keyboard with my overindulgence of punctuation in this post. (I would have inserted a backslash between the words backslash and question mark, but alas. That was the best I could come up with on short notice.)