The February … blahs?

During my teaching days, February was predictably a long and boring month. We were halfway through unusually bleak winter, and still had more than a few weeks to go before the magical “March Break.”
It has been slightly different since my retirement (when I am sometimes as busy as ever!), And I want to tell you about my February this year.

First of all, I caught a bad cold and spent most of 10 days in varying degrees of the classic “cabin fever.” You would think I was bored during that time, but, au contraire, news items have been quite riveting:
-- Groundhog Day revealed an assortment of predictions, with the local “Shubenacadie Sam” calling for more snow. We have had 2 major snowstorms in early February, amounting to almost all the snow that fell during last winter. And it's only the middle of the month!
-- Super Bowl XLVII (you figure it out!) was an interesting game, mainly because the San Francisco 49ers almost overcame a 20-point deficit in the 4th quarter. However, they were beaten 34-31 by the Baltimore Ravens. The big news from that game, of course, was the 30-minute blackout at the game venue in New Orleans during the 2nd half: there were many places to apportion blame, but it appears an electronic fuse accidentally tripped the power feed to the facility.
-- Pope Benedict XVI announced early this week that he was resigning, the first papal resignation during the last 300 years. That bombshell statement by the 82-year-old pontiff touched off plenty of discussion and speculation around the world, with many questions: Did he leave only for health reasons, as he cited? Why did he leave, when his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, died in office after a difficult and protracted illness? Will the Church now elect a younger, more liberal Pope? Will the new Pope come from Africa or South America, or even from Canada? Our Cardinal Ouellet, formerly from Québec City, and now chairing the Vatican bishops' commission, has been selected as the front-runner by British bookmakers!
-- A black affenpinscher named "Banana Joe" was named Best in Show at the prestigious Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show a Madison Square Garden in New York. The black dog with a monkeylike face hails from Attleboro, Mass. He will now retire and head back to the Netherlands. (A unanswered question arises from the news accounts, Dear Reader: Do champion dogs 'retire to stud?'
-- More than 4,400 passengers and crew were marooned on a cruise ship in the Gulf of Mexico for almost a week, after an engine room fire cut all power and services to the ship. Sanitary and food conditions became appalling, but there were no reports of injuries throughout the ordeal. The ship had to be towed to Mobile, Alabama, and everyone was landed safely last night.
-- And international sports betting scandal hit a number of Asian countries, as well as the sports-mad continent of Australia, where financial and game-rigging problems were discovered in football/soccer, rugby as well as their own “Aussie-rules football.” Many millions of dollars, pounds, yen, et.al., are all in play here.
-- Overnight, a meteorite crashed in the Ural Mountains in Russia, putting on a spectacular show during daylight hours. Several hundreds have been injured, mostly by flying shards of glass from windows broken by the compressed air.
-- An asteroid is predicted to fly close to earth this afternoon. How close? Within the orbited of our communications satellites. The astronomers have reacted with no more than a collective yawn.
Could Chicken Little finally be right?
Stay tuned.