The Baboon Congress

Pi Day

67 Comments

Today’s guest post comes from Sherrilee.

I’m a geek. I admit it. I love trivia; I love learning things. I have three magazine subscriptions: MentalFloss, Scientific American and National Geographic. I love Star Trek and have seen every episode of The Big Bang Theory. So three years ago when I first read that there are people out there who celebrate Pi Day, I was intrigued.

Pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter and is expressed as – 3.1415926…. into infinity. It’s decimal representation goes on forever and never repeats. Since March 14 is 3/14, it has been adopted as the day to celebrate the mathematical constant of pi. There is even a website where you can send Pi Day email cards and see Pi Day videos.

Although I’m not a serious fan of math, Pi Day seemed like a perfect holiday for my inner geek.

Last year I convinced my boss that I should be able to use my floating holiday for Pi Day and then sent out a few invitations to my neighbors. I pulled out all my cookbooks that might possibly have pie recipes in them and poured through them. Over the weekend before Pi Day, I did all the shopping – had to hit three different stores to get everything. I even stopped at the local liquor store and let the sales people recommend three bottles of wine that would “go with pie”.

The weather on Pi Day was wonderful. I was able to open all the windows to get fresh air and the sun streamed into the kitchen while I worked. I made seven kinds of pie: Dutch Apple, Cherry Apricot with Almond Crumbles, Bannoffee (toffee with bananas and whipped cream), Pecan, Peanut Butter with Chocolate Chips on a Pretzel Crust, Blueberry and finally, Crack Pie (gooey butter on an oatmeal cookie crust). The refrigerator had to be completely re-organized and I had to press the fireplace mantel into service to keep the finished pies out of reachof the dogs.

Everything turned out like it should and tasted great. It was relaxing to spend the day in the kitchen and it was fun to have another holiday in March to celebrate.

What obscure holiday do you like to celebrate?

67 thoughts on “Pi Day”

  2. I’m just trying to envision what one person would do with seven pies! I’ll bet your neighbors love you? My not-so-obscure holiday is this Sunday: St. Patrick’s Day. I was born a few minutes after midnight on March 18, but have usually claimed St. Patty’s Day as my birthday so more people will remember it. I know – pretty sad. This one will be my final year in the 60s, much to my dismay!

    For a few years, and only if this special day falls on a week end, I don yet another Halloween costume: a leprachaun (sp?). It’s a little kelly green mini dress with a very wide fake leather sash, green forearm covers, and a sassy green hat. I wear it wherever my errands take me, then wind up dancing at the Cheers Bar in Navarre. Most years, they have a wonderful Irish band and we all make up Irish jigs. This year is extra special for not only is this my final claim to “6”, but I’ve recently met a man who will visit the enchanted cottage this week end. Good excuse to clean for the first time in an embarrassingly long time!

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  4. Greetings! In a houseful of geeks and math and science fiction nerds, Pi Day is a big day for my guys. My 18-yr old son’s girlfriend was in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”:, so we went to the opening show last night. Afterward, we went to Perkins to buy a couple of the required pies for today. I had forgotten how fun that show was and they did a wonderful job with it. Thanks, Sherillee for the Pi Day blog!

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  5. Good morning. Great job at celebrating Pi Day, VS, and thanks for writing about it. The most unusual holiday celebration I can remember is a Winter Solstice party that I attended when I lived in Indiana. We were friends with some people who had formed a group called the Tunas. Some of them had purchased some wooded land where a few of them lived. They were known as the Tree Tunas. We were invited by the Tree Tunas to celebrate the Solstice at their place. There was a big bonfire and they made a witch out some stuffed clothing which they threw into the fire to burn the witch. It was an outdoor party at the start of winter and it was kind of cold, but we had a lot of fun.

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  6. Actually, the party I attended in Indiana was not a winter solstice celebration. It was a spring equinox celebration. The spring equinox will be here soon, but I don’t plan to mark this holiday by burning a witch in effigy this year.

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    1. You relieve me no end, Jim ;-). I celebrate the solstices, equinoxes and what we call the “cross-quarter days”: May Day, Lughnasadh (in August), Halloween and what Americans know as Groundhog’s Day (Imbolc, Candlemas or Brigid’s Day). All of those were celebrated by one European culture or another in ancient times, but it was a modern innovation to celebrate them all in the “Wheel of the Year” that links the agricultural cycle to the birth, growth and death of a deity–the Sun God for most, the Earth Goddess for us Dianics. These holidays are normal for me, though, so obscure ones…I’ve been to a couple of La Befana rituals; La Befana is the “Christmas Witch” who delivers gifts to Italian children on Epiphany. Oh, I got it, Zamenhof Day, on December 15, the birthday of the creator of Esperanto. I try to remember to wear a bit of green that day, since that’s the color of the Esperanto flag.

      BTW, I’m piggybacking my post onto yours, Jim, because today my work computer doesn’t want me to make my own. Figures they’ll upgrade to Windows 7 after I’m gone 😛

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      1. Silly WordPress, that last smilie was supposed to be sticking tongue out, not big smile. We don’t know the difference between colon dash D and colon dash P? Hmpf.

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      2. Thanks for the information about those holidays, CG. The Tree Tunas probably were just looking for a reason to have a party, but some of them might have been aware of the origins of equinox celebrations.

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      3. December 15 is my birthday too. Sharing it with Zamenhof Day is much more satisfactory than sharing it with “Bill of Rights Day,” which was all I had to claim previously. Set your calendar for March 22, the birthday of Steven Pearl Andrews, “The Pantarch” and the creator of the universal language, Alwato.

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      4. I had no idea Esperanto had a flag. I do hope there is also an anthem.

        Alas, YouTube does not seem to have the clip from Red Dwarf where Arnold Rimmer is trying to learn Esperanto, and failing miserably.

        For those of you not quite so very geeky, Red Dwarf is a totally irreverent and very snarky sci fi Brit com that back in the day, aired about the same time as Doctor Who on Wisconsin Public TV.

        Thanks for reminding me of that, CG

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  7. When I was in Grinnell, my undergraduate college, we often celebrated Jim Bridger. The celebrations were sometimes held on several different days of the week and at any random month. Ironically, the real Jim Bridger was born on the same day as my sister (but a little bit earlier).

    Why so much attention to an old mountain man? I had a Johnny Horton album with a chorus that was perfect as a drinking song. The melody was simple enough it could be sung by a college sophomore who had just been conducting scientific experiments with mixtures of creme de menthe and Four Roses.

    Let’s drink to old Jim Bridger.
    Yes, lift your glasses high.
    As long as there’s a USA,
    Don’t let his memory die.
    That he was making history
    Never once occurred to him,
    But I doubt if we’d a-been here
    If it weren’t for men like Jim.

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  8. Saturday is St. Urho’s Day. The day celebtates the saint who drove the grasshoppers of out Finland. Wearing purple and green is encouraged, and if you speak Finnish, which I don’t, you can quote St. Urho by chanting “Heinäsirkka, heinäsirkka, mene täältä hiiteen”, which I’m told means “Grasshopper, grasshopper, go to hell.”

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    2. The first of March was St. David’s Day-patron saint of the Welsh.

      IIRC, appropriate attire involved wearing either a daffodil OR a leek. I believe wearing both might be a bit much.

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    3. That’s the holiday I celebrate. I wear not a speck of green on the Irish day (I’m not Irish, so why should I wear green?). St. Urho’s Day for me! Onnellinen st. Urhon päivä!

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  9. International Talk Like a Pirate Day.
    If I could upload audio (which i don’t think i can…), I’d share the ‘public service announcement’ I wrote, recorded, and produced for ITLPD. Some of you might even recognize the background music and some of the sounds of the crew…

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        2. so the one pirate he says to the other i see you have the ships steering wheel down your pants mate. a
          nd the other pirate says arr its driving me nuts..

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    2. Pastafarians Unite! Talk like a pirate and eat pasta in honor of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster!

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    3. Wish we could hear the PSA.
      I took the pirate name quiz a few years ago. It gave me ‘Cap’n James Flint’ and Kelly, with her red hair, is ‘Red Jenny Cash’.

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  10. st louis park had a big pi day fundraiser every year where they sold pizza pies for the band i think. it was a fun celebration but i had a problem because the 14th of march is my oldest daughters birthday. then on her 4th birhtday my next kid was born so tara and spencer can always claim albert einstein as their birthday partner, always have.
    irving r feldmans birthday is a good day to celebrate and i have managed to avoid nailing the celebration to a particular day. i use it when i need a day of celebration. thanks to a thousand clowns

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    1. A Thousand Clowns is one of my all time favorite movies. Somehow, I didn’t remember the Irving R. Feldman celebrations that were declared to be holidays in that film. Thanks for telling us about that holiday, tim.

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  12. Sankt Hans Aften is a Danish celebration of midsummer. For some reason it’s observed on June 23rd. No particular color clothing is required (although a lot of the expats who live here choose to wear red and white – the colors of the Danish flag), but a bonfire with a witch on top is the traditional culmination of the celebration. Singing Midsommervisen is also de rigueur. We have a reasonably large contingent of folks with Danish ancestry and ties here in the Twin Cities, a lot of us get together for Sankt Hans on a farm in Eagan for a barbecue, hay rides, singing and dancing. The highlight of the evening is the bonfire with the witch. We stand around the blaze and sing until mosquitoes chase us home.

    I love celebrations that bring people together around food and song, one reason why the Eddies’ annual Memorial Day celebration is one I don’t want to miss.

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    1. misquitos are a timing thing. they come 1/2 hour before sundown and stop 15 or 20 minutes later. its a 45 minute event tops. thats not in stone but thats the heavy influx period. if the rest of the day is tolerable the evening is too.if the rest of the day on a hot wet summer is too buggy to be out the evening will be too.

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      1. Ha, wish the West Side mosquitoes knew about those rules. ! I can recall numerous summer evenings, sitting outside enjoying a glass of wine with out next door neighbors around their fire pit, swatting at mosquitoes the entire time.

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      2. i’m pretty sure the mosquitoes in the bwca don’t know that, tim. i distinctly remember one time in august when the mosquitoes were non-existent in the day – but as we sat around the fire after supper, as soon as the sun went down, we could hear the loudest buzzing i have ever heard….god knows how many mosquitoes were coming to get us. i did not stick around to see if they went away in 15 or 20 minutes – i dove into the tent and covered my ears so i couldn’t hear them.

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      1. Yes, Lisa, sankt is the Danish word for saint. Sankt Hans Aften means Saint John’s Eve.
        There’s a more modern, more rockabilly version of the song that was quite popular for a number of years, it made us old-timers cringe. Thankfully the old version seems to have regained it rightful place in most Sankt Hans Aften celebrations.

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  13. Glad for the reminder about Pi Day, VS. I think I’ll make a pi…

    One year we had a party dubbed the Summer Solstice and Radish Festival. And when we lived in Winona, we used to attend a gathering at a farm outside of Spring Valley, MN, complete with a live band, keg and wine, potluck dinner, and late at night a huge bonfire. I believe this still happens, and is one of those cosmic events you really want to get to if you can.

    In Husband’s family, we used to get together about 6 times a year to celebrate all the birthdays in that season, i.e. the March-April Birthdays, September Birthdays, etc. Potluck, and a lot of gag gifts with maybe a “real” gift for the kids. When everyone was still speaking, these were a lot of fun.

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  15. My birthday is Feb.1, and I always have resented Groundhog’s Day since it takes all the attention away from me! We usually celebrate St. Stephen’s Day (Boxing Day) on Dec. 26th by not going to work. Speaking of Pi, yesterday we had a savory pie potluck at work. The pies were wonderful.

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      1. My maternal grandmother was named Brigid, but I can assure you she was no saint. I’m pretty sure she would have celebrated with a pint of Guinness or two, and perhaps an extra pinch of snuff.

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  16. Thank you so much for the Pi day reminder, Sherillee! I have been worried that the free pie card from Baker’s Square I was given would get forgotten and expire.

    We don’t necessarily celebrate a lot, but we do like to find reasons to be guided in our meal choices for the day.

    In Canada tomorrow, they will be drinking Bloody Caesar’s :
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesar_%28cocktail%29

    to commemorate the Ides of March.

    I may have to join them.

    That and some rather generous servings of pasta should just about do it (I’d splurge and get canolli too, but I suspect there will still be some pie.)

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  19. I am holiday- and celebration-challenged. Not only do I fail at celebrating the big holidays in any sort of interesting way, but I’m totally oblivious of any obscure holidays and so never even try to celebrate them. I wish I was better at celebrating – you all sound like you have a fun time celebrating many things!

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  20. I have a calendar that includes added “bonus” holidays. Next month I get “Sparkle Circus Day” on the 13th, and August 15th is designated “Eat Chocolate for Breakfast Day.” The latter, especially, will need to be celebrated (a lot).

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  21. OT – I just found out they cast someone else as the Executioner in the opera Turandot. {Sigh} Ah well, it was grand fun to entertain thoughts of stardom and be seriously considered for a role. Thanks for all your good wishes and support. I might have to make a trip to see this production next month. Baboon field trip anyone?

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    4. I believe the Sunday performance is a matinee. I have tickets to the Thursday night performance – if Baboons are willing to be out past their bedtimes, the Tuesday/Thursday performances are pretty inexpensive.

      Sorry I won’t be able to see you on stage, Joanne. That would’ve been fun.

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  23. I once got a $10 Ikea gift card on Santa Lucia Day. They had a promotion where they gave a gift card to anyone who dressed in white. I’ve checked a couple of times since then to see if they’d repeat the promotion, but it appears to have been a one-time thing.

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