When to celebrate your birthday?
Let me tell you a little story. One year on the eve of my birthday, I was thinking of staying up a little longer until after midnight to mark the exact time of my birth. Then it hit me: the time had already passed because I was in a different time zone! Then I thought, well, if you really want to be precise, you'd have to take into account the exact amount of time in a year. The "tropical year", the time it takes the earth to revolve around the sun, is 365.242190 days.
Years later, after the invention of the spreadsheet, I thought it would be fun to make a spreadsheet that would calculate anniversaries to the minute. Here is a sample:
You can download this spreadsheet and play with it yourself. Fill in your name, date, time, and time zone. The spreadsheet will do the rest. The time zone doesn't figure in the calculation; it's just there so you know which time zone the chart is calculated for.
The spreadsheet can also be set to use the normal calendar year instead of the tropical year if you want. It's still useful just to see in what year you'll be what age and to see the weekday of each birthday. In the ClarisWorks version, set cell S6 to the word "cal" (without quotes).
May you live to 120!
Formats available for download:
Please report to me if any of these work or don't work for you. Thanks.