We got home a few days ago to notice a pile of dirt in that area between our sidewalk amd the street. A few other neighbors had the same thing. Who would go around dumping dirt on the curb?
It finally hit us: the dirt was there to fill in the hole from the telephone pole that used to be there! We had two poles right next to each other, and it was a real pain to get out on the passenger side sometimes.
There was extra dirt, though, which the Wife will probably appropriate for some horticultural cause.
***
The Daughter was at school with a substitute teacher. He asked the class the meaning of A.D., and some kids said After Death, which they had gotten from their regular teacher! The Daughter said no, it was Anno Domini, In The Year of Our Lord.
The sub, whose kids went to the same elementary school as the Daughter, said, “Your father is a librarian, isn’t he?” Guilty as charged.
Of course, many folks now use Before Common Era and Common Era.
***
Some quiz the Daughter was taking suggested that MCCM was 1800 in Roman numerals. This hurt my head. It should be MDCCC.
***
I got into a debate with someone as to whether the year 2000 was a leap year. This was a question about how the centennial year is NOT a leap year, which is true (1800, 1900, 2100, 2200) UNLESS the year is divisible by 400 (2000, 2400).
I wish I were going to be around in 2100, just to see how many calendars, print and electronic, decide to make that year a leap year. And I’d feel sorry for those kids born in 2096, 2092, 2088, etc., who will feel extra gypped by the loss of their actual date. I imagine someone will demand a recount.
Shades of Y2K!
What we were told, back in the Pleistocene Era, was that Roman numerals only go backwards a single step: LXIV is 64, but LXIIV will not be 63. So forget that MCCM business.
CBS was still doing copyright dates in Roman numerals at the turn of the century, and I have to admit, after a whole year of MCMXCIX, the stark MM for 2000 was something of a jolt.
(I once considered the vanity plate DCXXVI; I had been driving a Mazda 626.)
It won’t surprise you to hear that I knew those number things. While I personally prefer “BCE” to “BC” and “CE to “AD”, as as I know it’s only come up once in my blog, and that was in reference to it as a concept, not using it in a date. Maybe I need to write about some ancient stuff…