I can hear you asking: John, how is it that you, who are so attuned to dates and anniversaries (more examples here and here and here ), how did you let your blog’s first birthday slip by uncelebrated?
Excellent question, and thanks for asking.
Actually, although I pledge allegiance to the Gregorian calendar — despite its unequal months, its awkward solution to the extra-quarter-day problem and its odd names for the last four months — it felt like the Shoulblog Anniversary needed a more, well, celestial observation. So, following on the scientific wisdom of ancient Christians (that’s a joke, in case you don’t know me very well), Shoulblog decided to adopt a lunisolar dating system.
My first blog post was on February 16, 2010. That was 47 days before the Sunday after the first full moon after the 2010 vernal equinox. With me so far? So we’ll use the same general calculation for all future Shoulblog Anniversaries. That means the big day for 2011 is … March 8, or tomorrow!
In the future, to avoid having to go through all those calculations, you can get any halfway decent calendar, and look in the spring months for “Ash Wednesday.” Count back exactly one day, and you have our big day. If you have a truly excellent calendar, the day itself will be denoted as “Mardi Gras.” In the future, truly excellent AND hip calendars will call the day what it is: Shoulblog Anniversary!
Here in St. Louis, the World Headquarters for Shoulblog, the anniversary celebration has been going on for a week, and will come to a head tomorrow evening with a big parade downtown. This follows an even bigger parade held last Saturday. Tomorrow night’s celebration promises to be an exciting and raucous affair: strangers will unite, beer will be drunk, beads will be thrown, breasts will be bared, revelers will fall down … you get the idea.
However you celebrate out there, though, please be careful. We want you around to be reading Shoulblog for years to come!
