Okay ...?

The ever-reliable (cough, cough) Wikipedia includes this interesting bit on its list of December 30 events:

2011 – Owing to a change of time zone the day is skipped in Samoa and Tokelau.

You just know that someone in Samoa or Tokelau used this as an excuse for failing to show up for work the day after over-celebrating for New Year's.

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was a student at Michigan State, one night on the Channel 6 eleven o'clock news the woman who did the weather announced, "There will be no high tomorrow."

Now that is scary. And you can imagine the reaction it got from a bunch of university students.

I learned later that for meteorologists, if the temperature drops steadily or does not rise even one degree between one midnight and the next, that day is considered  to have no high.

At any rate, as startling as hearing that there will be no high tomorrow, try to envision the reaction if the late night news anchor calmly announced, "There will be no tomorrow tomorrow. Instead, we will skip immediately to the day after tomorrow."

The switch to the Gregorian calendar from the Julian led to a bigger loss of days, from ten to thirteen depending on when your native land made the change. Click on the highlighted link for the deets.

PS -- This is why Damien should be maintaining his blog! How are people supposed to learn these things without his help?