Ring in 2010 with a Blue Moon!

Are you a fan of the Rodgers and Hart standard Blue Moon?

Blue Moon, you saw me standing alone
Without a dream in my heart,
Without a love of my own . . .

It's been recorded by almost everyone - from Bob Dylan to Rod Stewart to The Marcels and Mel Torme (and, of course, Elvis - is there any song he didn't record? Not to digress, but have you heard his version of Hey Jude? - let's just say it's the antithesis of "taking a sad song and making it better").

But, back to Blue Moon, it's a great song and pertinent for this week (hopefully not in the sense of being so lonely you're talking to the moon . . . ). Did you know there will be a blue moon when we ring in the new year tomorrow night?

A Blue Moon is the second full moon in a month and it's pretty rare (hence the phrase "once in a blue moon"). Full moons occur every 29.5 days, so a bit of quick math tells us we have a blue moon approximately every 2.5 years (I worked that out in the tried and true eighth-grade-math-problem method - you know, where a boy gets five apples during a full moon and he's on a train traveling 45 mph and his dog is on a bus headed west with twice as many apples until he gives one-third to a fellow passenger . . .). Now that we have that settled, how often does a blue moon occur on New Year's Eve? Every 19 years - the last one was 1990 and the next will be 2028 (it's funny how 1990 seems like just yesterday, but 2028 seems very far away).

So, if your New Year's Eve celebrations take you outdoors tomorrow night - take a few minutes to commune with the Blue Moon! As for whether it will actually be blue . . . you'll have to find that out yourself!