It’s the shortest day of the year (or at least the day with the least possible amount of daylight). Yes, the winter solstice arrived at 5:44 AM (EST), and tomorrow we’ll be gaining an astonishing 3 seconds of daylight in my neck of the woods. It’s always a thrill to see the days start to get longer again, even if it seems to take forever to get back to an even split between day and night (which won’t happen until the middle of March (just in time for St. Patrick’s Day). And although they call this the first day of winter, we have yet to see the real snow and cold (at least around here, which is kind of a scary thought).

Way back in October, I mentioned a band-aid that had been stuck to the sidewalk on my way to work for at least a couple of weeks at the time. Since then, we’ve had over four feet of snow and sub-zero temperatures. That sidewalk has been scraped down with a little John Deere garden tractor quipped with a snow plow and a salt spreader that’s probably dumped a couple hundred pounds of salt on it. It’s snowed, warmed up, rained, gotten cold, froze, and snowed some more. And through all of this, I’m pleased (and rather amazed) to report that that damn band-aid is still right there, stuck in the same spot it’s been for probably over three months.

Since this is a sidewalk next to the Roman Catholic Diocese and Cathedral School, I’m tempted to call this a miracle (all it lacks is a scab in the face of Jesus stuck to it or something).

This is second only to the miracle of the clock in my bathroom stopping only moments before the late Harold Camping predicted that the rapture would come on May 21, 2011 (as opposed to his previous prediction that the end times would happen on September 6, 1994) at 9:00 PM EDT (6 PM local “Camping” time at his home in Alameda, California) – thereby sparing all us heathen sinners God’s wrath (if only temporarily – you can’t cheat the Almighty forever, and it looks like we begin paying for our sins on or about January 20, 2017).

It was months before I replaced the battery in that clock, lest I usher in the four horsemen of the Apocalypse and Camping’s predicted five months of fire, brimstone, plagues and lots-o-death.

Anyhow, one of these days I’ll stop and take a picture of that band-aid (as soon as I can figure out how to do that w/o looking like an idiot – it’ll definitely have to wait until I don’t need to wear gloves) and post it here.

Until then, better get out there and get your Xmas shopping done. After all, there are only five days until the big after-Christmas sales start.