Its all Augustus' fault!

Julius Caesar: Man, Soldier, and Tyrant

I was reading a little on Julius Caesar(us) and found out that he was responsible for getting the world switched over from the lunar calendar to the solar calendar.

After his little fling with cheeky Cleopatra, and his Civil War side show of conquering Alexandria, he brought back some Egyptian astrolger to set up the calendar for him.

The result was a thing of beauty; starting with January, every odd month had 31 days, and every even month had 30, except for February being adjusted on a leap year. Pure simplicity.

Then prideful Augustus has to come along and screw it all up. He stole a month to honor himself, and then changed the length from 30 to 31 days in order to be equal with Julius. Arrogantus then took an extra day away from February to even things out.

What nerve! I was angered about this for a while (perhaps revealing that I really am a "sad and depressed" person after all), until fellow cubicle dwellers informed me that the calender is still simple, even with Arrogantus' interference. Thanks to their anger management intervention, I am now a "knuckle counter", using the knuckles of both hands as months with 31 days, and the intervals between knuckles as months with 30 days (except February, of course).

It was my first introduction to such a method, but knowledge of it was world wide, as kindly explained to me by my multi-national colleagues.