Almanac Attack

I admit it. I have become the slightly wacko, but harmless uncle that no one wants to be trapped with at family functions. How have I come to this low state? I hold the almanac to blame. Over the years this little book with the hole punched in the upper left hand corner has wheedled its way into my life until it occupies a spot somewhere between guilty pleasure and addiction.

I know that the length of day today is twelve hours and forty seven minutes and the sun sits at a declination of five degrees and four seconds north of the equator. The last time the sun sat at this spot in the sky was March 7. The almanac predicted cold showers for that day. Today it predicts sunny and cool. So far, it is correct.

Not one single bit of the above paragraph is useful to me. The cat might find it useful to determine the optimum spot on the floor for napping. I have pointed this out to him on several occasions, but he does not seem to care and appears to still be plagued with a general lack of thumbs for turning pages.

As a result, I keep this arcane knowledge to myself. I will celebrate St. Omer's Feast Day alone. I don't know who he was since I am not Catholic, but I assume he died a horrible death a while back, and celebrate the success of John Herschel who took the first glass plate photograph on his date in 1839.

Finally, I notice that the moon is in Taurus, and that it is waning. This means, as we all know, that it is time to harvest root crops. Rest assured that if I had a single turnip in the ground, I'd be out there in the waning moonlight pulling them from their toasty beds.

Over two thousand years ago, a Greek philosopher, no doubt with almanac in hand, deduced the circumference of the earth when he noticed that the sun shone all the way to the bottom of a well in south Egypt at the equinox when it only reached the side of a well in Alexandria. Perhaps my family wants me to celebrate that discovery when they tell me to go soak my head in a bucket.

I usually don't do it. Geeks don't have to.