February is starting to wrap up and that means it’s time to write blog posts that attempt to quantify the month in a meaningful way. Today I’m linking up with Emily Freeman to share a few things I learned this month, some more serious than others. For example…

Learned at a field trip to a planetarium: Because of the speed of light, the light from the stars we see in the sky was actually sent out thousands of years before we saw it – so it may not even be there anymore. It’s like a person singing from far away, holding a continuous note, that we don’t begin to hear until after she starts singing – and she may or may not still be singing as we are listening to it…. kind of.

Side note: After the guy at the planetarium explained that Pluto is now considered a dwarf planet and somewhat similar to asteroids, BB said, “So Pluto is an asteroid that dwarves live on?”

Learned in the kitchen: My new electric milk frother makes exactly enough warmed slightly frothed milk for two small cups of cocoa for the kids or one perfect mug of coffee for mom. And if you like your latte super frothy, it can definitely do that, too. I seem to prefer “essence of froth” personally.

Learned while listening to the morning show on the radio: I’m not sure if this is a past tense or present tense story but apparently John Mayer is or has been in the habit of gifting girlfriends with swag bag gift baskets filled with his CDs and DVDs and John Mayer baseball hats. This horrifies me and I wish that we were close enough that I could call him up or like text him and say, “WTF John, that’s horrible. It’s literally the equivalent of a parting gift. You are better than this.” I hope his goal was to imply that they were tacky groupies that were unimportant to him because I don’t really see what other message that would send. Also, can I have one of those gift baskets?

Learned in every kitchen store in town: Sometimes the answer is to use what you already have instead of trying to find something new. I had to learn this twice this month in the same dish cabinet. We finally bought more of our favorite plates so that we can have a matching set that suits our needs. Then I was going to do something similar with our coffee mugs – buy all one kind of mug and donate the rest (except my favorite coffee mug because it’s special). After looking at every store in town, I finally realized I should just buy more of my favorite mug instead of trying to reinvent the wheel. It’s kind of like when you find a shirt you love – you should buy more of the same shirt in different colors. Duh.

Learned while reading February’s book club pick, Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson: World War II navy assessors would sometimes falsify records for U-boat wrecks when evidence was unclear so that they didn’t leave any loose strings or question marks in the history books. On multiple occasions U-boats that had been originally marked as possibly damaged were changed to probably sunk.

What things did you learn this month?