February Newsletter 2024
Happy Leap Day
Have you ever wondered why some years have an extra day in February? These years are called leap years, and they happen almost every four years. But what are leap years, and why do we need them?
Leap years are important to keep our calendar in sync with the seasons and the Earth’s orbit around the sun. A calendar year is 365 days long, but a solar year, or the time it takes for the Earth to go around the sun once, is about 365.24 days. That means we must add an extra day every four years to make up for the missing 0.24 days.
The idea of leap years goes back to ancient times when the Romans used a lunar calendar that was 10 days shorter than a solar year. Julius Caesar changed this by creating a new calendar based on the sun, with an extra day every four.
Later, Pope Gregory XIII improved this system by adding some exceptions to the leap year rule.
Leap years help us celebrate the seasons at the right time of the year, and also give us a chance to do something special on February 29.
Did you know that if you were born on a leap day, you are a leapling, and you can celebrate your birthday on February 28 or March 1 in non-leap years? If it were us, we would do both days, but we love a good celebration.
So, happy birthday to any leaplings out there!
We hope you take advantage of the extra day this year and that you now know some of the history behind this unique day that won’t return until 2028!
Pet Insurance
If your first thought regarding whether or not to buy pet insurance is that it is a ‘first world’ problem, we agree with you.
That’s until you get a bill for $7000 for a hip replacement for Fido. Yikes.
So, we decided to dive into this topic and try and get educated about whether or not pet insurance is a good idea.
Of course, we love our furry friends, feathered friends, and even scaly friends as much as you do. For us, they are family, and we want ours healthy, so we completely get it.
Now, on to the brass tacks. We found a good article on Forbes which states, “The average pet insurance cost for dogs is $576 per year and the average pet insurance cost for cats is $336 per year.”
“That’s for a policy with $5,000 of annual coverage, a $250 deductible and an 80% reimbursement level. A policy with unlimited annual coverage, a $250 deductible and an 80% reimbursement level costs an average of $816 per year for dogs and $480 per year for cats.”
That seems reasonable to us, but it also depends on the age of your pet and lots of other factors like whether they are inside or outside mostly.
It’s a great worksheet that asks a lot of questions and will definitely help your decision-making process.
Our conclusions? We hope you never need to use it, but pet insurance might be worth looking into depending on your circumstances.
What’s Your ‘Real’Age?
The journey of aging can certainly be a challenging one.
It becomes more challenging when we engage in bad habits from drinking and smoking, or just one too many pizzas.
While we can easily see our “outside” we cannot really see our inside, so when we ran across a new way to calculate our health, we jumped at the chance to inform you.
Have you heard about ePWV? It stands for estimated pulse wave variability, and recent studies have shown that it is a great indicator of lifespan and cardiovascular health.
A quick Google of this term and you will assuredly be gone into the scientific abyss. If you are like us, your eyes might glaze over and that is that.
In the interest of sparing you the techno-babble of medical science, allow us to share with you the article from Medium about “Abandoning Biological Age” that spurred our interest.
This boils down the concept and also provides a very handy calculator at the end so you can put your own data in and then find out what your “actual age” is.
For those of you that are bored, or as the kids say ‘TLDR’, the calculator can be found here. (editor’s note, it is a downloadable file)
We would strongly recommend reading the article above for grounding though, as it can be a bit confusing.
If you really want to geek out, a detailed description of ePWV and why it is an excellent marker of health can be found here.
Here’s to health, and hoping you get a ‘Supernova’ rating on your calculations!
Sunset Amphitheater
As you avid readers know, we love to support the arts and really enjoy a great music venue.
If you haven’t heard, our friends down in the Springs have recently announced a fabulous new venue called Sunset Amphitheater.
Looking at the photo above, it looks amazing and state-of-the-art. From 9News, “The 8,000-seat open-air amphitheater said it plans to open for the first concert on Friday, Aug. 9, at the Polaris Pointe development near the Air Force Academy.”
“The builder of the venue, Notes Live, said Sunset Amphitheater is part of a $90 million entertainment campus that will host large touring acts with a top-of-the-line audio-visual system, a self-draining grass berm, and more than 90 luxury fire pit suites.”
The venue opens on August 9th featuring Colorado’s own One Republic. Steve Miller Band and Dierks Bently have also committed to shows there.
For more information on this great new spot, visit their website here. We hope to see you out there!
Denver Restaurant Week
It is that time again, Denver Restaurant Week is upon us.
Starting on Friday, March 1, it runs through the 10th.
For those of you not familiar with this Denver tradition, 2024 marks its 20th anniversary.
From their website, “There are four price points this year (with both to-go and in-person options): $25, $35, $45 and $55 for multi-course meals. The tiered pricing structure allows restaurants to provide great deals for diners and a robust representation of Denver’s increasingly renowned culinary offerings.”
“VISIT DENVER’s program was originally created to showcase the city’s dining scene to local residents over a traditionally slow time of year for the restaurant industry. In its inaugural year, the program had 83 participating restaurants. In 2023, more than 200 restaurants signed up.”
The complete details for this fun 10 days can be found here.
What a great opportunity to experience Denver’s finest cuisine at a reasonable price. Enjoy!!!
Monthly Award Winners
Our monthly award winners for January were Maria Zapata, Patricia Rodriguez, Josefina Quinonez, Mary Moreno, and Nimia Espinosa.
In the Team Leader ranks, it was Socorro Ibarra and Isela Mendoza.
We are so proud of our winners, and of all the folks that are in and out of your homes each week.
We are also very appreciative to be a part of your lives and your homes. You provide the platform for our teams to perform, and for that we are grateful.
Please join me in congratulating our best performers for the month of January.
Queen Bee Corner
by Angela
I still encounter from time to time a certain amount of confusion about what services Denver Concierge provides and what services are beyond our scope.
The confusion lies in understanding the difference between housekeeping and housecleaning.
For example, a housekeeper, as the name implies, keeps the house tidy, putting clothes and dishes away, feather dusting surfaces, and perhaps a quick once over with a carpet sweeper to pick up any obvious debris on the carpet.
Housecleaners on the other hand are there to “clean”. They do not view the house through the same lens as the housekeeper. Where the housekeeper sees the throw pillows on the sofa are crooked, the housecleaner sees the dog hair underneath.
As cleaners, they are not trained to tidy up, clean out or rearrange. Their sole focus is on getting the house as clean as it can be from top to bottom, including the underlying areas where dust and dirt are likely to accumulate.
Having said that, there are certain houses we have cleaned for years where the team indeed knows the exact placement of the throw pillows.
Familiarity with a home invariably blurs the lines between the”‘ keeping” and the “cleaning” if only to a small degree.
A few times we have honored a request to add an outlier task to the cleaning routine but only if we feel it is within the capabilities of the assigned team.
Our goal at Denver Concierge is to always offer only what we can achieve to make our clients and our clients’ houses happy.
Bee