Day 3659

Another decade is drawing to a close. This is my seventh decade on this planet and I'm still having trouble with these arbitrary measurements. We use these ten year blocks of time to neatly classify pop music and identify trends, but if we didn't use the decimal system, the whole concept of a decade would be meaningless. There isn't even a compelling reason to start the year on January 1st. Wouldn't it make more sense to start the year on the shortest or longest day of the year? Nope. We start the year on January 1st because in 46 B.C. Julius Caesar decided it was time to reform the Roman lunar calendar and go back to the way the Egyptians measured time. He chose to start his new Julian solar calendar on January 1st. to honor Janus, the god of new beginnings. The day stuck, despite the fact that the Chinese still start the year between January 21 and February 21 and the Hebrew calendar begins in the Fall. March 1, March 25 and Dec. 25 were all considered New Year’s Day at various points in history. Go figure.

I got waitlisted again for an upcoming launch at Kennedy Space Center. This is the second time I've been waitlisted in recent months. There is kind of a community of folks who obsess about these NASA invitations. It doesn't take long to learn who got accepted and who didn't make the cut. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the selection process. Sometimes you can get selected several times in a row. And then there are long dry spells where your application seems to be ignored. It is easy to be disappointed when your applications isn't selected. After you've been to one launch, you want to go to all of them.

There's still a chance that I may get press credentials to attend the Solar Orbiter launch, but that remains to be seen. I'm still a little unsure how the press accreditation process works and my contacts at the magazine that would be sponsoring me are out of the office on Christmas vacation. This will all be resolved in due time, but it's hard to be patient when nothing else is going on.

I added all the new dogs to the Dalmatian Rescue website today. Considering that none of the dogs would stay still, I think the pictures came out pretty good. This is the only website I maintain anymore. I don't even update my own site these days. I used to maintain dozens of different websites and was busy making additions and changes every single day. Those days are long gone. Most of my old clients retired even before I did.

Janet and I found a forgotten bottle of champagne in the back of a kitchen cabinet, so we will toast in the New Year if we can manage to stay awake for a few more hours. Other than a very sad day last April, 2019 wasn't a bad year. You can always hope the new year will be better though. Hope keeps you moving forward. Here's hoping that all of you find yourselves happy and fulfilled in the year ahead.

Dot is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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