Some things are easy.

It's easy to be thankful for sunny days (unless you need rain, of course).

It's easy to be thankful for clothes drying on the line in the sunny breeze.

It's easy to be thankful for your friend at Bible study catching it when the coffee pot started to overflow, and helping you clean it up.

It's easy to be thankful for a drive to NOLA to visit Grandma and Grandpa.

It's especially easy to be thankful when Little Girl comes along to visit also, as she is doing today.

It's easy to be thankful that when the doorknob on the front door broke yesterday, first i was able to get it open with my preferred tool, a butter knife, and Sweetie was able to run to a hardware store and procure a new knob which was installed right away.

It's easy to be thankful that the shelter is so very, very quiet right now (the calm before the kitten season storm that should begin in about 3-5 weeks).  It only takes about 45 minutes to do my Friday evening routine!

It's easy to be thankful that #2 Son and Daughter-in-Law Becky trust me to "dogsit" when they go camping.

It's even easy to be thankful that we have plenty of toilet paper.

What it's not so easy to be thankful about is that i'm in the middle of trying to get our taxes ready, but i'm trying to be grateful for it anyway because the fact that i have to do taxes means i have an income and a home and a place in a country that uses tax money to provide things like roads and universities and libraries and everything else our tax money goes toward.

Those are the things it's easy and not so easy for me to be thankful about today.  Write up your own list of things for which you are thankful and link up over at Ten Things of Thankful.  It's a worthwhile exercise.



Today is:

Carnaval de Barranquilla -- Barranquilla, Spain (four days of pre-Lent celebration and street dances that mostly shut down the city)

Clam Chowder Cook-Off -- Santa Cruz, CA, US (if you love clam chowder of any variety, this is the place for you)

Dairokuten-no-Hadaka Matsuri -- Chiba, Japan (around this date; one of Japan's "naked" festivals, as participants wear only a loincloth as they wrestle in the cold, wet mud, bringing luck to the community as they run through the crowds smearing the lucky mud on the onlookers)

Dance of the Secret Places -- Fairy Calendar

Dag van de Revolutie -- Suriname (Day of Liberation and Innovation)

Februaristaking -- Netherlands (commemoration of a strike against the Nazis)

FESPACO Film Festival -- Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso (Panafrica's Film and TV Festival, celebrating African filmmakers; through Mar. 4)

Festival of Ptah -- Ancient Egyptian Calendar (date approximate)

International Sword Swallowers Day 

Katsuyama Sagicho -- Katsuyama, Japan (Chinese influenced fire festival held the last weekend of every February; large stages are built and decorated, then burned the next day)

Kitano Baika-sai (Plum Blossom Festival) -- Kitano Tenman-gu Shrine, Kyoto, Japan

Lesser Eleusinian Mysteries -- Ancient Greek Calendar (date approximate)

Let's All Eat Right Day -- in honor of the birth of Adelle Davis in 1904, an early pioneer in good nutrition

National Chocolate Covered Peanuts Day -- some sites say any nuts will do, some specify peanuts; take your pick

National Clam Chowder Day -- not to be confused with New England Clam Chowder Day, back in January

National Day -- Kuwait

Open That Bottle Night -- time to finally drink that bottle of wine you've been saving for a special occasion; after all, the final Saturday in February only comes once a year (sponsored by Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher of The Wall Street Journal) 

Parke County Maple Fair -- Rockville, IN, US (pancake meals, a Covered Bridge Art Assn. show, and more; this weekend and next)

People's Revolution Day/People Power Day -- Philippines

Pistol Patent Day -- Samuel Colt received US Patent #138 for the first pistol on this day in 1836

Quiet Day -- can't find the history behind this one, but mommy wants one!

Showa-Shinzan International Yukigassen Tournament -- Japan; snowball fighting (yukigassen) at its best, through tomorrow

St. Walburga's Day (Patron of boatmen/mariners/sailors/watermen, harvests; Antwerp, Belgium; Eichstätt, Germany; Gronigen, Netherlands; Oudenarde, Belgium; Plymouth, England; Zutphen, Netherlands; against coughs, dog bites, famine, hydrophobia/rabies, mad dogs, plague, storms)

Soviet Occupation Day -- Georgia

Swamp Cabbage Festival -- LaBelle, FL, US (also called Hearts of Palm, gear up for two days of food, entertainment, and family fun)


Birthdays Today:

Josh Wolff, 1977
Chelsea Handler,1975
Sean Astin, 1971
Tea Leoni, 1966
Carrot Top, 1965
Lee Evans, 1964
Neil Jrdan, 1950
Ric Flair, 1949
Karen Grassle, 1944
George Harrison, 1943
Diane Baker, 1938
Tom Courtenay, 1937
Bob Schieffer, 1937
Sally Jessy Raphael, 1935
"Texas Rose" Bascom, 1922
Bobby Riggs, 1918
Anthony Burgess, 1917
Jim Backus, 1913
Millicent Hammond Fenwick, 1910
Adelle Davis, 1904
Zeppo Marx, 1901
Meher Baba, 1894
Enrico Caruso, 1873
Charles Lang Freer, 1856
Pierre Auguste Renoir, 1841
Xuande, Emperor of China, 1398


Debuting/Premiering Today:

"A Little Night Music"(Musical), 1973
"Toys in the Attic"(Play), 1960
"Wonderful Town"(Musical), 1953
"Your Show of Shows"(TV), 1950
"Natoma"(Herbert Opera), 1911
"Riders to the Sea"(Play), 1904
"Hernani"(Victor Hugo Play), 1830


Today in History:

The First Bank of the United States is chartered, 1791
The German Midiatisation is enacted, taking over 1,000 German sovereign states into about 40 larger entities, 1803
Samuel Colt patents the first revolving barrel multishot firearm, 1836
The first US electric printing press is patented by Thomas Davenport, 1837
Hiram Rhodes Revels, a Republican from Mississippi, is sworn into the United States Senate, becoming the first African American ever to sit in the U.S. Congress, 1870
The US Steel Corp. is organized under J P Morgan, 1901
The Stanley Cup: Ottawa Silver 7 sweep Toronto Marlboroughs in 2 games, 1904
Marie-Adélaïde, the eldest of six daughters of Guillaume IV, becomes the first reigning Grand Duchess of Luxembourg, 1912
Oregon places a 1 cent per U.S. gallon tax on gasoline, becoming the first U.S. state to levy a gasoline tax, 1919
Diplomatic relations between Japan and the Soviet Union are established, 1925
Glacier Bay National Monument (now Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve) is established in Alaska, 1925
Francisco Franco becomes General of Spain, 1926
Charles Jenkins Laboratories of Washington, D.C. becomes the first holder of a television license from the Federal Radio Commission, 1928
The USS Ranger is launched. It is the first US Navy ship to be built solely as an aircraft carrier, 1933
In occupied Amsterdam, a general strike is declared in response to increasing anti-Jewish measures instituted by the Nazis, 1941
The first Pan American Games are held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1951
Cassius Clay defeats Sonny Liston, 1964
The first unit of the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, the first commercial nuclear power station in Canada, goes online, 1971
President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines flees the nation after 20 years of rule; Corazon Aquino becomes the first Filipino woman president, 1986
In the Cave of the Patriarchs in the West Bank city of Hebron, Baruch Goldstein opens fire with an automatic rifle, killing 29 Palestinian worshippers and injuring 125 more, 1994
In the Irish general election, the Fianna Fáil-led government suffered the worst defeat of a sitting government since the formation of the Irish state, 2011