While today might be historically known as a day that will go down in infamy, I’m not sure if our slate of celebrations are really set up to leave that kind of lasting impression. Yesterday we didn’t get up to much in the way of celebrations at all though, so I feel like we need to tap on the gas just a little to make up for it. We’ll see – we have surpassed our goal of 2,000 parties this year, and while we are committed to making it through all 366 days, we no longer feel obligated to do weird shit like learn what a sacher torte is and bake it. Here’s how we spent yesterday:
National Microwave Oven Day
Remember the World’s Fair? Once upon a time, gigantic leaps in technology were unveiled at these massive events, and journalists would carry stories of these futuristic doo-dads back home for folks to ruminate on just how bitchin’ the future might be. It was at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933 when Westinghouse demonstrated a device that cooked food between two metal plates attached to a shortwave transmitter. The world was impressed.
But it was eight years earlier when self-taught engineer Percy Spencer was working on an active radar set when he noticed the microwaves began to melt a chocolate bar in his pocket. Thus began the experiments. The first thing cooked in a microwave oven was popcorn. The second was an egg which exploded in the face of one of the experimenters. It took until 1945 for Raytheon to file a patent on this tech, and until the early 70s for them to find their way into homes.
Growing up, I always had a microwave. I’ve never known life in the era when you’d have to use an oven for all re-heating purposes, though I acknowledge I’m of the first generation of kids who can say that. Yesterday we used our microwave to heat up some leftovers, and we appreciated its presence in our kitchen. Some things, like pizza, fried chicken, or anything with a crunch to it, should still be heated up in the oven, and we absolutely will not cook with the microwave because we know better. But for what it does, we would not want to live without it.
Put On Your Own Shoes Day
This is another celebration for which we could find no origin. Perhaps it was created by a mother of a young child, hoping to encourage them to finally take that step and learn how to put on their own shoes. Maybe it was some drunkard over at Chase’s Calendar of Events, looking to prank his editor with a few entries that don’t actually exist.
That’s okay. We no longer really question where these weird days come from. The strangest ones were concocted by a couple in Pennsylvania just for the sake of concocting weird celebrations, so what’s to stop others from doing the same? At least this one is fairly easy to celebrate: I walked the dogs. In order to honour this celebration properly, not once did I enlist any help from anyone else in donning my own footwear. Nor did I attempt at any time to don the footwear of someone else – there are two ways one could read the title of this celebration.
So we celebrated this one properly, whatever the weird journey it might have taken from someone’s twisted brain to our list of December 6 activities. We are in to the very end, folks, even if it means we have to put on our own shoes.
Only two? Yes, only two celebrations yesterday. As I said, we might get up to more today, but then we might not. Here’s what we have to choose from:
- National Illinois Day. Deep dish pizza was a consideration for this one, but we’ve already done that. Maybe something else will jump into our brains.
- National Cotton Candy Day. There’s really only one way to celebrate this. Sure, we whiffed on picking up some rhubarb vodka the other day for that celebration, but we aren’t going to be missing this one.
- National Letter Writing Day. It’s kind of weird to me how many days there are in the year to celebrate writing letters. Who writes letters anymore?
- Walt Disney Day. To be clear, Walt’s birthday was on December 5, but whoever created this day felt it should be celebrated on the first Monday of the month. Weird? Not as weird as Put On Your Own Shoes Day.
celebrate366.com 