I was scrolling through social media last night and got a good laugh from everyone being confused that the moon wasn't blue. The news hyped up the blue moon without much explanation as to what it is, causing quite a bit of confusion. Hint: The color blue has nothing to do with it.
The phrase "once in a blue moon" is commonly used to refer to a rare event, and it is rare for a "blue moon" to occur. There are two definitions of a blue moon:
Seasonal Blue Moon: This is the original definition of a blue moon. A typical year has four seasons, each with three full moons, making a total of 12 full moons in a year. However, because the full moon cycle is approximately 29.53 days, sometimes there are 13 full moons in a year. When this happens, one of the seasons will have four full moons instead of the usual three. According to this definition, the third full moon in a season with four full moons is called a blue moon. This kind of blue moon happens roughly every 2.5 to 3 years.
Monthly Blue Moon: This is the more recent and more commonly used definition of a blue moon. According to this definition, when there are two full moons in a single calendar month, the second full moon of the month is referred to as a blue moon. This definition came about due to a misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the original rule, but it has become widely accepted and is the one most people are familiar with today.
Under either definition, a blue moon is still just a regular full moon. Its color is not affected, and it does not appear blue. The moon can sometimes appear to have a bluish hue, but particles in the Earth's atmosphere cause this and are unrelated to whether the moon is technically a "blue moon" or not.
Also, because of the different time zones around the world, a blue moon in one location may not be considered a blue moon in another, depending on when the full moon occurs. For example, a full moon that occurs just after midnight on the 1st of a month in one-time zone may occur just before midnight on the last day of the previous month in another time zone, resulting in two full moons in one month in one time zone but not in the other. Make sense?
February can never have a blue moon, as there are only 28 days. But there are times when the month doesn't have a full moon at all; this is called a black moon.
I still enjoyed the photos everyone posted online. Even though there was some confusion and maybe a bit of disappointment, the news still got tons of people to take a break from their everyday lives to look up.
It felt so nice outside last night that I took a little stroll through my neighborhood at around 2 a.m. The temps were in the low 60s, and it felt amazing outside. Especially after the 100+ temperatures we have dealt with over the past month. It truly felt like fall had arrived. I'm sure the heat will show its ugly head a few more times before autumn finally sets in, but the current nighttime temps are amazing.
I haven't been posting much over the last few weeks as I have been trying to pull myself away from my websites for a much-needed breather. The video game Satisfactory has been keeping me occupied. I think I'm going to stop posting my quotes from Wisedocks.com to social media and completely disconnect for a bit, only dropping an occasional post here on FartDump when I have something to discuss.
So that's where I stand at the moment. I still have about two months left on my soft ban on Facebook, where my largest audience resides. When that gets lifted, I may pick back up then.
It will be December before my soft ban on FartDump's page gets lifted, so I still have to wait before attempting to revive that page. I will play it by ear and go with the flow. There is no sense in trying to force anything simply to put up content.
I've been kicking around ideas for FartDump, like bringing back my video game reviews and possibly television and movie reviews. They were a lot of fun to write on Wisedocks before I decided to go with a niche quotes site. If only I hadn't deleted them, they would have fit nicely here. Truthfully, I still don't know what I want to do with FartDump. The domain is being used as a testing site for the CMS I have been developing, but I have grown attached to the name and the blog, so the site will stay up once the software is finished. Taking a break from working on my websites will clarify what I want from them.
But who knows? I get a good idea every once in a blue moon.
