Well, here is it again, the Muddled New Year. For those keeping track at home (eagerly awaiting the restoration of the holiday ticker in the sidebar, no doubt), today is day 5:000 of the Muddled Age, marking five years since I piled way too much stuff into a Miata and headed out to see some of the United States for “three or four weeks” before moving to Prague. That trip took a little longer than expected, spanning more than seven months, 18,000 miles, and over a hundred blog entries dedicated to that trip alone.

Good times. Coincidentally, Road Trip Day is also my birthday.

The holiday is a young one, so the traditions aren’t as entrenched as some of the old-calendar events, but I’m happy to report that I did remember to make the first words I uttered for the New Muddled Year “elevator ocelot rutabaga”, virtually guaranteeing a happy and prosperous year to come.

This year has already started auspiciously. March 31st (4:363) was a beautiful sunny day, but still on the chilly side. Today the weather was simply spectacular, the kind of day where things like this happen. (I was dismissive of that story at first, but the loyal readers of this blog enjoyed it and took the trouble to tell me so, so I submitted it to Piker Press. The rest, as they say, is history.) Lest you think my description of the first nice day of spring in Prague is an exaggeration, let me just tell you that I was talking to a dude about it on the 31st and he got downright misty.

I once also joked that somewhere there is a bureaucrat with a big button on his desk labeled “spring.” when he pushes that button crews rush out and dig up every third street corner and all the trams sport yellow signs alerting passengers that there’s really no telling where the tram is going to go. (Actually the yellow signs tell exactly where the tram is going to go, but it may have nothing to do with where it went the previous day. By that measure Monday was the first day of spring. I laughed repeatedly as I walked past holes in the sidewalk that had not been there the day before, cobblestones piled or asphalt carted away. In most cases the crews who had dug the holes were nowhere to be seen; no doubt they were off digging other holes in another part of town — holes don’t just dig themselves, you know.

Happy New Muddled Year, everyone! It’s off to a great start!

Calendar Note: the pedants among you can relax; the Muddled Calendar started with year zero, so when the calendar reads five that means five years have elapsed. There will be none of the silly arguments around millennia we have with the old calendar. You don’t have to thank me, it’s what I do.