I think that getting older means measuring time in years and in minutes.

January 2: A great day! It’s great, because today is the first day that we, located as we are at 51 degrees north, make it back up to 8 hours of daylight. Today, the sun rose at 8:39 and will set at 4:39. The darkest morning was yesterday; the darkest evening was actually back on December 14. These are the days with the latest sunrise and earliest sunset, respectively; the shortest day per se is, of course, the day on which the solstice occurs. The further south one travels, the further separated the darkest evening and morning are. In Hawaii, one is in early November; the second is in early February. We’re pretty far north here, so of course the two extremes are only a couple of weeks apart. I know all this from scouring websites on the matter, and one my faves is sunrisesunset.com.

So, this time of year I glory in reading the tables and seeing the return of light speeding up: We get one extra minute tomorrow, but FOUR on Friday! Hurray! I’m seriously like a little kid about this and it’s one reason why January is one of my favourite months, all full of hope and happy expectations, with a new year and the return of the sun.

January is also the month in which I was born, January 21, 1964, and getting older really does make time seem to go faster. I’ve been reflecting on this a bit lately, not obsessively, but what seems to be happening to me are two things that seem contradictory. I do reckon time in ever-increasing chunks; for example, I am now officially off sabbatical (in fact I wrote up my course syllabi today, and nothing says “new semester” like that), but I am already thinking in terms of getting through six semesters and doing it again in three years. It’s amazing to me that I can even conceive of planning three years ahead, but here I am. On the other hand, I’m also becoming increasingly focussed on minutiae, on how those minutes add up, and especially in doing a better job of recording my life, in its details, in several formats, including this blog. One thing that I just mentioned in our “annual update” that we send to our families and friends was how angry (sort of) I am at my 17-year-old self for doing such a terrible job of documenting the life-changing summer I spent in Germany in 1981. I want to remember everything now…

…like how we spent New Year’s Eve!  We went to Jaro Blue, which was a great choice as it’s just a five-minute (or less) walk from our house so we could imbibe as we saw fit, and even better was that the dinner and the whole experience was just perfect. We had four courses with three choices of small (but not minuscule) plates per course. I’d say that the best among everything was the smoked duck ravioli that they serve there; pasta with a texture that sumptuous is a rare thing, just perfect. They also do a killer sweet potato frites. Oh, and martinis. Very, very nice martinis.

Happy New Year, everybody!