February 21st – Single-Tasking Day

February 21, 2017 at 12:01 am | Posted in Today's Reasons To Celebrate | Leave a comment

Good morning my frenzied friends. Today is Tuesday, February 21, 2017. Today’s reasons to celebrate are:

Single Tasking Day

If like me, you find it difficult to walk and chew gum at the same time, then Single-Tasking Day is custom-made for you.
Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, but it seems that the exact opposite is true. The demand for increased production puts stress on all of us. Multi-tasking has become the norm, even though studies have shown that the human brain is unable to focus on two or more tasks at once. And studies also suggest that multi-tasking actually lowers productivity. The ability to take your time to do a single task at a time means less stress and fewer mistakes.
Single-Tasking Day is a day set aside to turn the ‘rat race’ into a leisurely stroll…at least for one day out of the year. Concentrate on completing one task at work before moving on to the next. And, Single Tasking Day doesn’t only apply when you’re at work. If you have errands to run or little jobs to do around the house, prioritize them to make the most efficient use of your time. Then, when you’re finished, unplug everything (after you finish reading this BLOG post, naturally). Spend some time with your family…yes, those annoying people who live there with you, and who are constantly interrupting you while you are trying to do a dozen things at once. Play some board games. Sit down and talk with them and find out what the heck is going on in their lives.
Author’s Note: My primary sources are evenly split, listing Single-Tasking Day as falling on either the 21st or the 22nd. So, if you are too busy multitasking today to celebrate this holiday, at least, try to celebrate it tomorrow. You’ll be correct according to at least one of my “reliable” sources no matter which date you choose. Also, I could find no definitive data on who created this holiday, or when…but the “why” seems obvious.

Card Reading Day

Card Reading Day is one of those ambiguous holidays of tenuous origin that is open to interpretation. My sources revealed no concrete information about who, what, when where or why this holiday even exists, yet it is listed in a number of them. Does Card Reading Day mean that you should have your fortune foretold by Tarot Cards? Does it mean that you should take a sentimental stroll down “memory lane” and re-read some of the special cards that have been sent to you over the years? Or, does it mean that you should loiter in the greeting card aisle of your local grocery store, department store, or stationery shop and read all of the cards there? I guess that is for you to decide.

International Mother language Day

International Mother Language Day was created by the United Nations in 1999 to commemorate the date in 1952 when four students were killed for using their mother language, Bengali, in Bangladesh. It has been observed annually ever since to promote linguistic and cultural diversity. It honors language diversity and variety across the globe.  It also observes the human right to use one’s native language.

National Sticky Bun Day

A delicious breakfast pastry, sticky buns are made from rolled pieces of leavened dough that often contain brown sugar and sometimes cinnamon. Before the dough is placed in the pan, the pan is lined with sticky sweet ingredients such as maple syrup, honey, nuts, sugar, and butter. When the buns are finished baking, they are then flipped upside down so that the sticky bottom becomes the topping. Famous cousins to the sticky bun are the cinnamon roll, caramel roll, and monkey bread.
The first people to add honey and nuts to their bread were the Ancient Egyptians. Glazed pastries have been popular ever since. German settlers in Pennsylvania created our modern-day sticky buns, which were originally called “Schnecken” and are still considered a Philadelphia specialty.
Celebrate by baking or buying some fresh sticky buns and enjoying some for breakfast this morning.

On This Date

• In 1804 – The first self-propelled locomotive on rails was demonstrated in Wales.
• In 1842 – John J. Greenough patented the sewing machine.
• In 1848 – The Communist Manifesto was published by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
• In 1858 – The first electric burglar alarm was installed in Boston, MA.
• In 1866 – Lucy B. Hobbs became the first woman to graduate from a dental school. The school was the Ohio College of Dental Surgery in Cincinnati.
• In 1878 – The first telephone directories issued in the United States were distributed to residents in New Haven, CT. It was a single page of only fifty names.
• In 1925 – The first issue of “The New Yorker” was published.
• In 1932 – William N. Goodwin patented the camera exposure meter.
• In 1947 – Edwin Land demonstrated the Polaroid Land Camera to the Optical Society of America in New York City. It was the first camera to take, develop and print a picture on photo paper all in about 60 seconds. The photos were black and white. The camera went on sale the following year.
• In 1965 – Malcolm X was assassinated in New York City at the age of 39 by assassins identified as Black Muslims.
• In 1975 – Former Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman were sentenced to 2 1/2 to 8 years in prison for their roles in the Watergate cover-up.
• In 1988 – In Baton Rouge, LA, TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart confessed to his congregation that he was guilty of an unspecified sin. He announced that he was leaving the pulpit temporarily. Swaggart had been linked to an admitted prostitute.
• In 1989 – President George H.W. Bush called Ayatollah Khomeini’s death warrant against “Satanic Verses” author Salman Rushdie “deeply offensive to the norms of civilized behavior.”
• In 1995 – Chicago stockbroker Steve Fossett became the first person to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon. He landed in Leader, Saskatchewan, Canada.

Noteworthy Birthdays

If you were born on this date, Happy Birthday. You share your birthday with the following list of illustrious individuals – and about 20-million other people.

• Andres Segovia 1893 – Classical guitarist.
• Zachary Scott 1914 – Actor.
• Ann Sheridan 1915 – Actress.
• Sam Peckinpah 1925 – Director.
• Erma Bombeck 1927 – Humorist/columnist/writer.
• Nina Simone 1933 – Singer/songwriter.
• Rue McClanahan 1935 – Actress.
• Gary Lockwood 1937 – Actor.
• Tyne Daly 1946 – Actress.
• Alan Rickman 1946 – Actor.
• William Petersen 1953 – Actor.
• Kelsey Grammer 1955 – Actor.
• Mary Chapin Carpenter 1958 – Singer.
• Christopher Atkins 1961 – Actor.
• William  Baldwin 1963 – Actor.
• Jennifer Love Hewitt 1979 – Actress.
• Charlotte Church 1986 – Singer.
• Ashley Greene 1987 – Actress.