Happy Fat Tuesday! Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent, so “let the good times roll!” Damsel and I will not be giving anything in particular up for Lent, although our dieting lifestyle has lots of “give-ups” built in to it already.
Today, after a bunch of running around, we celebrated the day with Cajun Jambalaya for our main meal. Good stuff!
The Colors: Remember the symbolism! Purple stands for Justice, Green for Faith, and Gold for Power.
Hope everyone is having a safe and lucky Friday the 13th. We’re enjoying it and preparing for Valentine’s Day tomorrow.
I looked up Friday the 13th on Grokipedia and found this near the bottom of the article. It is a very nerdy description of how to calculate the date without looking at a calendar. Enjoy, if you’re a nerd like me.
Yearly Variations in Occurrence
In the Gregorian calendar, the number of Friday the 13ths occurring in a single year varies between one and three, with no year featuring zero or four such dates. This limitation arises from the calendar’s structure, which consists of 365 or 366 days distributed across 12 months, resulting in exactly 13 occurrences of the 13th across all months but constrained by the seven-day week cycle to produce at most three Fridays among them.[83]
Years with three Friday the 13ths typically follow specific patterns based on the starting day of the year and whether it is a common or leap year. In common years beginning on a Thursday, the dates fall in February, March, and November, as seen in 2015. Similarly, 2026, a common year starting on a Thursday, will have Friday the 13ths in February, March, and November. These configurations highlight how the alignment of the year’s first day influences the distribution, with February, March, and November forming a common triplet due to the cumulative day offsets in non-leap years.[83]
To predict the exact day of the week for any 13th, including Fridays, Zeller’s congruence provides an algorithmic method tailored to the Gregorian calendar. Devised by Christian Zeller in the 19th century, the formula calculates the weekday as follows:
Where,
h represents the day of the week (0 for Saturday, 1 for Sunday, …, 6 for Friday);
q is the day of the month (13);
m is the month (March = 3, April = 4, …, December = 12, with January and February treated as months 13 and 14 of the preceding year);
K is the year of the century (year mod 100)
and J is the century (|year/100|)
A result of h=6 (mod 7) confirms a Friday.
This congruence enables precise determination of Friday the 13ths for any year by applying it to each month’s 13th, revealing the yearly variations without manual calendar inspection.
Since we’re probably not going to post a blog tomorrow, please enjoy Valentine’s Day with your special ones.
Saturday, 02/14/26 VALENTINE’S DAY: I took this photo of a heart-shaped tree mobile this morning . . .
On each of the four cross-quarter days, we tend to celebrate our Celtic heritage by having a dinner that may have been served in celebration of the seasonal days as recognized by our forebearers. Both Damsel and I have ancestry that traces back to ancient Western Europe, where the old celebrations may have taken place.
The name Imbolc derives from the Old Irish phrase i mbolg, literally meaning “in the belly,” which refers to the swelling abdomens or udders of pregnant ewes at the point of impending lactation. This etymology aligns with the festival’s historical association with early February, when sheep in Ireland typically began lambing and producing milk after winter, marking a key agricultural transition.
Saint Brigid of Kildare (c. 451–525), also known as Brigit or Bride, was a prominent Irish Christian saint, abbess, and founder of one of Ireland’s earliest monastic settlements at Kildare in the province of Leinster during the 5th century.
Both references above come from Grokipedia rather than Wikipedia; it is reference without the left-wing bias as in the latter case. Click on either link to view the Grokipedia articles about Imbolc and St. Brigid.
Our feast today will be Irish Guinness Beef Stew, modified for low-carb vegetables, of course. The feast will be posted on our food blog sometime later today.
Image above: Festive Cross of Saint Brigid adorning a feast table. Click to view enlarged.
We have no children or other descendants living close by, so we will be celebrating Mothers Day quietly while remembering our departed Mothers in Heaven as we prepare a nice Sunday Feast of smoked London Broil steak. The meat is marinating as I write this and will be put in the smoker soon.
Damsel is a Mother and Grandmother as well. We will celebrate her with a card and a gift from myself and the puppies for whom she does a good job of “mothering.”
Our three grandchildren living in California are now all Mothers since the birth of the latest (5th) great-grandchild in early March of this year. We will be wishing the young Mothers a very happy Mothers Day.
Mothers day falls in the spring when flowers from the various cacti are popping up. The (clickable) image above is of a saguaro cactus flower taken earlier on Saturday (05/10/2025), complete with some pollinators doing their thing.
So, we wish God’s Blessing on all the mothers out there, past, present and future. Happy Mothers Day!
Happy first day of Spring (northern hemisphere)! We’re off to a good start with daytime temperatures in the mid 70s and forecast to become in the mid 90’s in a week or so.
Greeting me on the first day of spring were these two critters — a cactus wren on the block feeder and an antelope ground squirrel foraging in the west side of the yard:
We always get a lot of comfort and enjoyment when the creatures which abound in our little corner of the desert show themselves to us and our cameras.
Both images were taken with the Canon EOS Rebel SL3 and an EF 55-250 lens at 250mm. Click on either image to view enlarged.
This date in history marks the 1564th anniversary of the death of Saint Patrick; the sixth-century icon who lives in perpetuity by virtue of his 30 years of activity in restoring the Christian Faith to the island of Ireland. The video below takes a serious look at how St. Patrick’s day came about. And no, it isn’t about getting drunk and engaging in gluttonous behavior on March 17th.
Dave Stotts takes a look at the history surrounding the life of St. Patrick in this video – watch time almost an hour. Damsel and I watched it and got a lot out of the actual reasons and history behind the St. Patrick’s Day celebration. There is a good amount of travelogue footage in the video as well. I recommend watching it on the You Tube full-screen and not in the <iframe> below.
And speaking of gluttony, we’re going to have a traditional Corned Beef and Cabbage Dinner to celebrate, but not in the portions that would actually make us gluttons. We might celebrate with an Irish cocktail for dessert. Hope that y’all have a great day.
Near the end of the video, Dave, the host and narrator of the video, offers this rendition of a prayer attributed to St. Patrick:
May the Strength of God guide us.
May the Power of God preserve us.
May the Wisdom of God instruct us.
May the Hand of God protect us.
May the Way of God direct us.
May the Shield of God defend us.
May the Angels of God guard us.
– Against the snares of the evil one.
May Christ be with us!
May Christ be before us!
May Christ be in us,
Christ be over all!
May Thy Grace, Lord,
Always be ours,
This day, O Lord, and forevermore. Amen.
