2011

It is a new year now.
It is no longer 2010, and this is my helpful reminder to those of you who might not deal with dates a lot.
Go through your checkbook and put "2011" in the year blank on all the checks.


2011!  ...which, by the way, I wasn't sure I would live to see. I don't mean last spring I wasn't sure. I mean when I was twenty. I couldn't imagine living in a year that didn't begin with 19.
Having read the book, I think that I couldn't imagine living past 1984. 
Long, long ago, probably when I was about twelve, I calculated the year that I would be able to retire and came up with 2013. 
Bizarre. 
Unfathomable.


All that aside.
I've decided to use "2011" instead of "11." Plain old 11 could be November, or the day after he 10th, or the year. It confuses me. In the last century, only between 1932 and 2000 (inclusive) was it safely cogent to abbreviate the year to two digits. Now that I think about it, I don't know why I didn't have that trouble with 2010 (*see below).
I like the way "2011" looks. The first two numerals can be nice and rotund and whimsical, because they have those two nice strong posts behind them to lean against, to keep them in line.
2010: My handwritten zeros never look the same, especially when there's a completely different shape to form in between them. I didn't like writing that all year. *I used "10."
2009: Just a goofy number, isn't it? A pitcher-eared apple-cheeked Alfred E. Newman of a number.

2008: My problem with 2008 was that sometimes I would make a little snowman out of the eight and sometimes I'd write it according to The Palmer Method . . . ∞ standing up instead of  overwhelmed, prostrated by the idea of its own longevity.
2007: I have a problem with 7s as well as 8s. I can't write them the same way twice consecutively. Sometimes they come out all flourishy and serifed . . . and sometimes they're nice straightforward over/down. 7. If the latter made a noise it would be a firm and slightly metallic anh-unh. And sometimes my "anh" wasn't long enough and the 7 looked like a 1.
2006: Too many round parts. I took up too much space with all those circles. On occasion I'd get carried away with all the roundness and my 6's tail wouldn't be quite visible: a problem.
2005: Once again, too many chubby little circles.
2004: Just too much going on with this one. Circles, lines, angles! 
2003: Circles!







2002: Well, now. To my eye 2002 had a nice symmetry. It makes me think of an Ionic column.





2001: A weak sister to 2011. The roundy bubbly shapes were too much for the final digit's strength.  That poor final 1 was trying too hard and not quite standing up for itself.


Alrighty then. 
What to label this post but "quirks."