By now, you’ve had your 2005 calendar tacked somewhere on a wall for four months. It may be too late to tell you about the free calendars you can download from a variety of programs and from websites, but it’s never too late to tell you about a variety of calendar websites that post interesting events and activities worldwide.
If you are planning a trip, some of these calendars can tip you off about when (or when not ) to make vacation plans. You might want to coordinate your plans to coincide with some of the fun or wacky festivals that no one country can claim a monopoly of.
Other calendars on the Web list offbeat celebratory days where you will find something unusual 365 days a year.
What’s On When .Travelers can use this site as a resource for finding potential entertainment options across the globe. Choose a theme, a country, or a specific date; plug in that information and voila! You will get a list of activities that you may want to explore wherever you happen to be going. Guides are divided into Business, Leisure, and Globetrotter. The latter guide lists about 17 events happening between now and the end of the year (sorry, but you will have missed the first ten—but you always can plan these for next year). Whatsonwhen makes an excellent resource for activities going on in Chicago, too. Chicago and other major cities are listed in a special category and you can browse their special events by month.
10,000 Year Calendar .The Calendar Home Encyclopedia on this site lets you pick a year (any year) and discover events—current or historical, making the website a nice jump-off point for doing historical research. This site also offers free, printable calendars and links to many other calendar sites.
Earth Calendar . This website is serves as a daybook of hoidays and celebrations around the world. When I entered “April 22” I learned that it is Earth Day in the U.S. and Canada; Great Prayer Day in Denmark and Greenland, and Oklahoma Day in the U.S. Also, astronomy buffs will like the information on lunar phases and eclipses for the year.
Wellcat Holidays .Somewhat similar to Chase’s Calendar of Events, the lists here include more than 80 fun and imaginative holiday celebrations. This is a place to find references to wacky days such as “Eat All the Chocolate You Can Day” (I made that one up). Coming up: “Hug an Australian Day” on April 26; “No Homework Day” on May 6; and “No Socks Day” on May 8. I can’t help but wonder just exactly who is in charge of making up these celebrations. My guess is that anyone can, but how they get on the Wellcat list is a mystery to me. Maybe a reader could fill me in on how it’s done.
Q/A from the Cyberscribbles mailbag. The question that came from D.T. asked if it was safe to download Windows Service Pack 2 on his pc. The answer is a definite Yes. SP2 was released many months ago, and at first the computer techies were warning computer users to wait until the bugs were out of the new release. The techies gave the green light some time ago, and everyone (except MAC users, of course) should download SP2 if they have not yet done so.
