You must be so tired.

Ya. Me too.

I couldn’t stay up all night though. I can barely make it to midnight on New Year’s Eve.

What did you do, set your alarm clock?

I know.

I totally googled it before I went to sleep.

7:25.

Well, the official site said, “approximately 7:25”.

At 7:25 a.m. this morning, Phil would emerge from his burrow and prognosticate the required ongoing trudging through the snowy wonders of winter, or the fact that spring is just around the corner!

So, two things:

It was really 7:28, as we now well know.  So Phil is a bit of a narcissistic rat because I read recently that if you are habitually late, you harbor feelings of self-importance and might have delusions of grandeur.  Also you are probably a half step away from being on the FBI’s Menace to Society list.

I might have made that last thing up.

But seriously. As if being attentionally and detail-ally deficient aren’t possible contributors to chronic lateness. I know. Gah. Experts. (eye roll).

Okay, so Phil is a narcissistic rodent and also I will still need the seat warmer (butt heater) in my car for a while more.

This is the official transcript of what Phil said (through his translator of course):

A Super bowl winner I will not predict
But my weather forecast, you cannot contradict,
That’s not a football lying beside me
It’s my shadow you see
So, six more weeks of winter it shall be!

I mean, I don’t want to blame the messenger or anything.

But…

DAMN YOU PUNXSUTAWNEY PHIL!

Don’t worry. I’m a huge Phil fan. I’ll reverse my negativity in no time.

Plus, he mentioned football. So, like, he’s even more okay in my book.

Okay, I’m back.

I love Phil again.

But you know what also happened when I googled to find out what time they were waking Phil up? I found out that Groundhog Day is actually also ….

wait for it…

Candlemas!

Yep.

And, also, just as an aside it is also the thirtieth anniversary of the Nearly Perfect Husband’s and my very first smooch.

It’s our Smoochiversary!

Nope. Not kidding.

So it’s Groundhog Day.

It’s Super bowl Sunday.

It’s our 30th Smoochiversary.

And now I know, because USA Today printed the Candlemas poem (and I didn’t know what Candlemas was so I googled that and CantonRep.com (connecting Stark County, it said. And I don’t know where Stark County is but I was finding myself in a googling frenzy and I had to stop somewhere so you can google Stark County and let me know where that is as you have probably not reached your googling limit today but I hit mine at about 7:32 a.m. after Phil prognosticated. Deep breath.))

Anyway, CantonRep.com had the awesome headline of, “Candlemas, Groundhog Day, Superbowl, dot, dot, dot, how can you not have a party?”

I totally agree!

And CantonRep.com didn’t even know about the Smoochiversary because they are a local paper and probably don’t have a huge staff.

Or, they too, reached their googling limit earlier today.

Either way, it was a really cool headline.

But the extraordinarily cool thing is that Ed Pritchard Staff Writer (long name, I know but sometimes you have to pay homage to many family members when you name a kid (I’m guessing ‘Pritchard’ and ‘Staff’ are family names)).

Anyway, Ed talked about going to an event to see his own local groundhog, General Stark II (who probably knows exactly where Stark County is), and hearing about Candlemas!

Ed wrote that he learned it had been celebrated for over 2000 years and is the midpoint between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox and there were details about blessings of candles and the purification of Mary and something about presenting Jesus at a temple.

There was probably more information that required the attention to detail that allows some people to be habitually on time.

But then it got really good for this Punxsutawney Phil fan!

So, it turns out that in the 1500s a bunch of German Farmers decided that this day was a good day to try to figure out how the growing season might go. So they would slog around trying to find hibernating animals and see if they were stirring (they used hedgehogs… you know… rather than bears. Probably a good choice).

And these farmers decided that seeing a shadow meant a longer winter. So, basically, cloudy days meant spring was near.

And then, while the Pilgrims were packing for America, they decided to pack that tradition along with the grain and clothes and stuff.

And, because they were now Americans, they commercialized the whole thing in 1886 with Phil.

I have got to write Mr. Writer a thank you note because I learned so much this morning (I will also include a ‘just in cases’ apology because I may have placed emPHAsis in the wrong places, or gotten one or two things wrong, all in my excitement that there is yet another thing to celebrate on this fine February day in 2014).

So, you probably need to go, right?

I mean, there’s a lot of work to do to get ready for a GroundhogDayCandlemasSuperbowl Party.

Just imagine if you also had to prepare for your Smoochiversary (and had to hide that fact from your cherubs because all cherubs everywhere feel pretty dang offended at the mere notion that their parents ever smooched in the first place).

I know.

That is a lot of detail, requiring a lot of attention, right there.

I’m totally going to be late.

Thanks for readin’.

* As always, you can come on over to Just Ponderin’s facebook page to comment or just hang out.