Man, I can really feel those days getting longer.

We have picked up one additional minute of sunlight since December 20th.

Break out the SPF50 suntan lotion!

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Around this time last year, I providing some comparisons to help us understand the difference between 1 million and 1 billion. I want to do it again this year because the media keeps giving us stories like this:

Massachusetts Legislature passes $43.1 billion state budget for fiscal 2020

To be clear, $43.1 billion is a shitload of money. How much you say? Well let me tell you....

Most of us have a pretty good handle of what 100 is. We've all seen 100 of something. 100 pennies is $1.

Working from there, we can pretty much recognize what 1,000 of something is. Chances are pretty good that we've all seen a thousand of something. 1,000 pennies is $10.

Here's where things get fuzzy. Most of us have never seen 1,000,000 of something. We don't have a mental picture of a million. We also do not have a mental picture of a billion or a trillion.

Here's a little something that might help you with the differences between thousand, million, billion and trillion:

100 seconds is 1.6 minutes.
1,000 (thousand) seconds is 16.6 minutes.
1,000,000 (million) seconds is 11.6 days.
1,000,000,000 (billion) seconds is 31.8 years.
1,000,000,000,000 (trillion) seconds is 31,800 years

Remember that when you hear some politician talking about a billion dollars like it was nothing.

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There is no hockey tonight, anywhere. The Bruins play the Sabres tomorrow at 7:00.

There is no football tonight, anywhere. The Patriots play the Dolphins on Sunday at 1:00.

There is no baseball tonight. Pitchers and Catchers don't report to spring training camp until February 11th and the first game isn't until February 21st when the Red Sox play there traditional first game against Northeastern University.

This means I really need to find something to watch in the evenings.

While I do that, you can do these:

• Yes, drugs were involved. Lots of drugs.



• Key subheading in this story: "American continues to lead - and to innovate."



• This is what happens when politicians hamstring the police and end things like "stop and frisk".



• Key phrase in this story: "We're all about answering the important questions..."



• Key phrase in this story: "Because who's going to believe that I hit a catfish..."