Time is out of joint

O cursed spite

It appealed to me greatly when I saw it in the bookstore. At last, a calendar devoted to tracking dates instead of wasting time on extraneous fluff. It was “The Calendar.” (Nice, functional title.) It didn't sport any art or other distractions. This it proclaimed in large print on its cover:

No kitties, no flowers, no inspirational quotes, no babies. Just 12 big blank grids for 2010.

What could be more straightforward?

I happily purchased The Calendar and took it home. I posted it on my wall. (That's what you do with calendars, right?) The dates were big and visible and easy to read from anywhere in the room. Nice!

I sat down and got to work on my spring semester syllabus. Naturally, I kept glancing at the calendar. The birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.? That's a Monday holiday in the school schedule and there's no instruction on that day. According to The Calendar, it will be January 19.

Wait a minute! According to the college website it will be January 18.

Scratch the head. Look at The Calendar. Look at the website on my computer screen. Go up to the The Calendar and look more closely. Hmm. January 18 is correctly labeled (in the fine print) as Martin Luther King Day, but it's the first day of the week.

Bloody damn. It's a Monday through Sunday calendar (the weekend is, in fact, the end of each line). Unlike 99% of the other calendars out there, The Calendar's first column is devoted to Monday.

I checked: The same publisher offers a “bad cat” calendar with the conventional Sunday through Saturday format.

This is going to drive me crazy all year.