Monthly Donation Reminder

The idea behind these, you'll recall, is that maybe by pointing my donate button monthly I'll build up a reserve and thus I won't have huge disasters where I have to pray that one or more readers suddenly has more money than they know what to do with lest I lose everything.

That has utterly failed to work out.  On the upside is the fact that so far donations have managed to pull me back from the brink when there are huge disasters.  (Thank you, all.)

The stuff ahead of me in line made it so furnace guy didn't make it here yesterday.  He did make it today.  The house is still in the process of heating up, and thus I'm still cold, but the furnace is working now so warmth should be coming any moment now.

Of course that's another $473.95 I need to somehow come up with.

Anyway, I usually talk about months in these posts.

In the beginning November was the 9th month of a ten month year.  Hence the name.  (Novem = nine.)  January and February were added (to the beginning of the year) at the same time month lengths were reassigned with a preference for odd numbers.  November was reduced to 29 days and was now the 11th month of the year.

In 46 BC the Julian Calendar was put forward by Julius Caesar.  This restored November to 30 days.

Because the difference between the Julian Calendar and the Gregorian Calendar is three leap days every 400 years, most people still think in terms of the Julian Calendar even if they don't know that's what they're doing.

November is a short month (29 days pre-Julian) and so the ides fall on the 13th.  Days after the ides are counted backward starting with the first day (the kalends) of the next month, thus today is XVII Kal. Dec.