Calendar One of my favorite rituals happens in January: the Discarding Of Last Year's Calendar.

I am inherently mistrustful of automated reminders, so before the New Year's Calendar goes up, all of the important birthdays must be recorded. This requires me to go through Last Year's Calendar in order to transfer them. In the process, I get a little review of the past year, through my various notations.

2006 looked a little like this:
The bad back acted up in January, as evidenced by three chiropractic visits.
I had planned to take the LSAT in February. I was excited, or scared, and even put a little exclamation point after the acronym. However, I chickened out, applied for their partial refund, and never took the test.
March required my attendance at a much younger relative's bridal shower. I'm not a big one for these events or their formalities, but her spoiled nature and crassness revealed themselves when she shouted "Fuck you!" repeatedly at her sister while opening gifts.
April was the month that I thought I'd get involved with the Social Responsibilities Committee at the Unitarian Church I'd been attending. I made it to a total of two meetings before my interest waned, and I stopped going to church altogether.
May was very social, as I was in a wedding in Kentucky and attended the aforementioned relative's wedding on Long Island. There were also several birthday parties, two lunch dates with old friends, a barbeque, and a day at the beach.
In June, I twisted my ankle during my last wedding as a bridesmaid, and left for Costa Rica.
I came back to the US and July and immediately jumped into a summer course and a new relationship. The two of us went to a ballgame with my mother.
August saw me desperately trying to shoehorn in the end of the summer course, a week of curriculum planning at work, a court date, and a week in Chicago. We also went to a ballgame with my dad.
In September ltan had her first gig in a long time! Here's to more, soon...
In October I started getting monthly massages, a worthwhile indulgence. The man met my best friend and I had dinner with his family. We went away together for a weekend.
November saw the production of our fall play at school, after much delay.
Then in December, there's nothing written down, except the dates of our Winter Break.

Last Year's Calendar is a sort of anthropological artifact in a way that journals and photo albums are not. I wasn't recording things the way I felt them or wanted to remember them; they are just marked in the boxes. It's quite a concise way to reminisce, and a reminder of how much happens in a year.  ¶ 8:12 PM