Feb. 29 should be a magical day

Just think about it: Where will you be this time next year?

Nowhere, because this time next year doesn't exist.

Virtually every other holiday going on in 2008 will take place again in 2009 - with the possible exception of 2008 Day - but not today. We won't see the likes of Feb. 29 again until Feb. 29, 2012.

Some people might think the prospect of a Feb. 29 birthday (or wedding or any other kind of anniversary) is uncool, because they are unimaginative. Obviously, the only real way to treat a Feb. 29 birthday in non-Leap Year years is to celebrate on both Feb. 28 and March 1, then have a real three-day blowout bash every fourth year.

Same goes for wedding anniversaries and the like.

But hey, what do I know? My birthday is (mark your calendars!) Sept. 19 and I consider the whole week surrounding it prime time for festivities.

But the day doesn't have to just be special for those people born or wed on Feb. 29.

At the very least, it's one year in four where March won't feel like a horrible repeat of February. Normally, if it's Friday the 13th in February, for example, then it will be Friday the 13th in March, too. But the extra day knocks March into its own unique arrangement.

A perusal of my calendar shows only one Friday the 13th occurring at all this year, in June, which lends further credence to the possibility 2008 might just prove to be the luckiest year of all.

It can be magical for any one of us.

The very word is there in the title: Leap Year. Leap Day. Or is it Leap Year Day? Leap Day Year? Now I am confused.

In any event, it's time to take a leap and do something you wouldn't ordinarily do. (Nothing illegal or dangerous, of course. It's depressing I even need to offer a clarification like this.)

Make that recipe which has been staring you in the face for years!

Call that person you haven't spoken to in more than a decade!

Plan that vacation you've been putting off forever!

And if you're a single twenty-or-other-something lady who's been hedging your bets about confessing your long-buried, secret attraction to hairy newspaper columnists, well, then, today is the day to break the silence!

Ahem … got a little carried away at the end there. Sorry.

Better yet, live every day as though it were a day which only comes around once every four years.

Being good to yourself isn't something which ought to take so long to do.