Groundhog Day

Lauren with Fizzy the groundhog

Have you seen the film Groundhog Day, in which Bill murray has to keep re-living the same day until he can get Andie MacDowell to fall in love with him?

Well, it turns out that yesterday was Groundhog Day. It was Lauren who educated me to this. I picked her up from school and she greeted me excitedly with a pop-up groundhog that she'd named Fizzy.
The train of thought was this:

The groundhog is brown
Cola is brown
Cola is fizzy

If you look closely at the picture, you'll see that she then extrapolated this to give the groundhog yellow teeth because cola rots your teeth.

A Groundhog (Source)

Groundhog Day is a day that falls half way between the Winter Equinox and Spring Solstice -- always the 2nd of February. On this day, groundhogs (also known as woodchucks) have special discernment in predicting how long the winter will last. If it comes out of its hole and sees its shadow, this means that there will be six more weeks of winter, otherwise it will be an early spring. The most famous groundhog is Punxsutawney Phil in Pennsylvania (this was the one featured in the film), but many other parts of the country have their own captive groundhogs and make their own predictions. NC boasts two weather-forecasting rodents -- Sir Walter Wally in Raleigh and Lil Bit in Lexington.

Groundhog Central lists many groundhogs, along with their 2006 prognoses. There is even one where the groundhog died in 2002 and the prognosticating has been taken over by a llama! (By the way, have you heard The Llama Song?)

Emily and friend skipping

The other thing I did yesterday was to watch Emily (at school) skipping. Although, it turns out that a skipping rope is called a jump rope here. I'm not sure if this means that she was jumping, which one can do without a rope; or if she was jump-roping. Perhaps someone can let me know. The event was part of this year's Jump Rope for Heart campaign (American Heart Association).