Pre-Erev Post-Birthday

It is, of course, no extreme surprise that I am mightily confused by math. Everything seemed to be going fine for me until I learned that there were an infinite number of numbers between integers. This did not make me happy. In a post-modern spate of Xeno-inspired angst, I asked myself when and how one moves finally from 1 (and all the space around it) to 2 (and all the space around it). Is there some sort of imperceptible "ding," an alarm that goes off when you finally take the step from 1.999999999999...to 2?

I feel the same existential confusion about my sister Jessica's birthday.

The only point of reference I have about her birthday is that it happens to fall on the Vernal Equinox (which I remember primarily because my mother was considering calling Jess "Vern" for the sake of consistency). But what do we know about the Vernal Equinox - that it has equal hours of light and dark - so, when exactly is it? As I understand, the equinox takes two days time to fulfill, or, more precisely, it straddles a period that is neither the 20th or the 21st, it is both. So when the hell is my sister's birthday?! I go through this every year, and end up, as I did again, blatantly missing the date itself.

Sigh. Sorry, Jess.

(By the way, when I just spell-checked this entry - which I seldom do because it doesn't work on Safari - it insisted that "Jessica's" was misspelled and suggested "cheesecake". This, I believe, just about sums it up.)