Happy New Year!

I went to bed early last night. Stay up till midnight? Well, as I get older I find that on New Year's Eve, sometime it's Yes, and sometimes it's zzzzzzzzz...

I woke up in the middle of the night and realized that the New Year was here.

I got up this morning and found that it had snowed during the night. The ground is white. Not much snow, and I doubt it'll last long, but it's much more winterlike on this New Year's Day than it was yesterday, when it rained all day long and the thermometer was in the mid-40s. Here in northeast Iowa, yet.

My first task this morning was to go around the house and deal with the calendars. Hallway upstairs, the brass perpetual calendar wheel on top of a bookcase was easily changed from December 2006 to January 2007. In the kitchen I put up a new 2007 calendar which I picked up at a restaurant down in Prairie du Chien— hey, it lists the phases of the moon and the best fishing days and all that, not that I'm a fisherman, but somehow to me that always makes it seem more like a good old-fashioned calendar. And here in my study I set up a new 2007 desk calendar from an insurance agency.

Remember, it's two thousand seven and not twenty oh seven. I think these past several years the "two thousand" forces have been prevailing, but I still hear the occasional person— usually a radio newscaster or media figure— who tries to foist the feckless "twenty-oh" usage upon us. Don't join them in debasing the coinage of our calendar.

And also remember, among the anagrams of "two thousand seven" are "handwoven outsets" and "advent townhouses."

I'm going to spend New Year's Day very quietly, just sitting around here at home and relaxing.