April 28, 2016

Today we celebrate:

National Cubicle Day - Do you work in a cubicle?  You know, that assortment of partial walls with openings whereupon you find a desk here and there.  No doors, everyone can hear everything, germs float over the walls and infect everyone in the room.  In other words, heaven on earth. I work in a cubicle, but I kind of like mine. It’s my home away from home and if you plug in earphones and turn up your music, you can drown out all the whispers and chitchat that distract you from your job.

Pay it Forward Day - The Pay it Forward Day people at http://payitforwardday.com/ want to inspire the world to perform more than 10 million acts of kindness all around the world.  The website lists all the countries who have people who have pledged to participate, there are 75 of them. Is your country one of them? Maybe you can participate and do something to make someone’s life better.  Get creative, it doesn’t have to be expensive, just thoughtful and kind.

World Day for Safety and Health at Work - The theme for this year is “Workplace Stress: a collective challenge”. Stress? What stress? Don’t you all spring awake in the morning, eager to get to work and tackle the day’s issues? Of course you do. I’m sure that you and your co-workers all work together like a well oiled machine with nary a cross word among you. Your companies consider your safety to be of paramount importance and will spare no expense to make sure your job is as safe as a stroll around the block. Hmmm….well someone, namely the International Labour Organization, has been unaware of everyone’s blissful and safe life since 2003 because that is when they created this day.  They are under the odd impression that 2 million men and women around the world lose their lives through workplace accidents or disease and many times that are injured in workplace accidents and occupational diseases every year.  They think we need to work to make our working lives safer, so perhaps we should indulge them and see what we can do to accomplish that goal.

National Superhero Day - Begun in 1995 by employees of Marvel Comics, this is a day to become a superhero for your community.  Make yourself a cape and put on a colorful body hugging spandex outfit that shows off every muscle. Then you can go out and save people with your super powers. You do have super powers, right? No? Well, maybe once you put the outfit on you will develop some.

Take Our Daughters & Sons To Work Day – For twenty-one years now the goal of this day has been to help strengthen the connections between work and education and the relationships between parents and their children. The theme for this year’s celebration is, “Sparking Aha! Moments.”  This day is primarily for children between 8 and 18 years old.

Great Poetry Reading Day – This is a day to read great poetry and I have just the website for you. There are lots of poems that I enjoy, many of them were written for kids by Shel Silverstein. I'm not sure what that says about me, but there you go. On this website you can find many poets and apparently you can publish your own as well. This link takes you to one of my favorites. If you go to http://allpoetry.com you can find almost any poem you want.       

Poem In Your Pocket Day – Speaking of poetry, this one is celebrated on the last Thursday in April. We also celebrated this a few days ago on the 21st because I can't figure out which day this is actually supposed to be celebrated on. So maybe you can do it again. Take a poem you like and keep it in your pocket today so you can pull it out and read it whenever you feel the urge.

National Blueberry Pie Day – I love blueberries almost as much as my brother-in-law who asks for blueberry baked goods every time I see him.  He’ll be a happy camper today.

Kiss Your Mate Day – Today is the day to kiss your spouse, boyfriend, or girlfriend if you have one.  If you don't, next choice is your kids. If you don't have any of them, find a willing stranger. Unless you live in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where kissing a stranger is illegal. And when this day falls on a Sunday (fortunately not this year), if you live in Hartford, CT, you'll have to skip this day altogether if you're married because it's illegal for a man to kiss his wife on Sundays and I don't promote illegal activities on this blog. But since it’s Thursday this year, you’re in the clear Hartford residents. More fun kissing information can be found at this site. It's five years old but still relevant.
Biological Clock Day – Our biological clocks do more than nag us about running out of time to have babies. Our clocks tell us when it's time to sleep and when it's time to wake up which is what gets messed up when we travel to different time zones and don’t take steps to reset our clocks. Amazingly enough, they also control our metabolism, and even our temperature and blood pressure among other things.

Workers Memorial Day – Each day worldwide a worker dies, is disabled, or is made sick by a preventable workplace incident every 15 seconds. This is a day to honor those people who didn't get up to go to work expecting to never come home or to come home permanently changed. All they were trying to do is take care of their families. Our companies need to take better care of their most valuable resource; their people.

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