My lovely mother emailed me my horoscope for today. I find it applicable and pleasing, but then horoscope writers would be out of business if their horoscopes weren’t broadly-applicable and easily-pleasing. “Virgos born on August 30 have an overwhelming urge to express their individual identities. They have a great love of learning, travel, and the written word. They are known for their discriminating good taste and good looks and always appear well dressed in public. Although August 30 people seem calm, they’re actually high-strung and excitable.”
There are a few aspects about August 30th, the date, that amuse me. Easily pleased and easily amused ain’t bad.
- In keeping with my fondness for Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, 8/30 is the 242nd day of the year. 242 is also a palindromic number.
- It’s easy to remember how many days are left after 8/30 until the end of the year: 123.
- 8/30 is a nice, even number, but if I wanted to calculate my half birthday, it doesn’t exist: count six months from August 30th and you’ll end up on February 30th. If you count by days, 182.5 days after my birthday lands on March 2nd (I was born at 8:02pm, so the .5 day pushes me from 3/1 to 3/2).
Unfortunately, 8/30 is also very close to the start of the school year. This year, GW’s Fall 2009 courses start early, on 8/31. This also puts me on the younger end of my class, since I was born more than halfway through 1989, and many of my peers were born in 1988.
8/30 isn’t a terribly interesting day for world events or notable births and deaths. According to Wikipedia’s article on August 30 (date articles are one of the many things for which I love Wikipedia), I share this date of birth with such luminaries as:
I think the best of that list are Shelley, Rutherford, and Buffett. Not a stellar list.
I promise this blog will not be overtly personal. But it is calderstembel.com, and I’m going to indulge myself today.
