I was born on a Saturday. This year my birthday also fell on a Saturday, but it shouldn't have.
The normal Julian calendar with its 7-day weeks ensured that every 7 years, the weekdays would coincide. However, Julius Caesar made a little mistake: The year was not 365.25 days long, but a little less. And so, in the long centuries that passed, the calendar was again out of pace with the seasons, if not so grossly as in Caesar's time.
Then came a certain Gregory, Bishop of Rome (and other titles), and reworked the calendar; his mathematicians realized that there were too many leap days being added, and ol' Greg decided that adding fewer days would be a good solution, so they decided that they would make it more complicated by going to the end of each century and see if the year was a natural multiple of 400; and if it wasn't (1700, 1800, 1900) then it wouldn't be a leap year under the new system.
This means that 2000 was only the 2nd time that a century has ended with a leap year in more than 400 years, something very few people reflected upon some 20-odd years ago. I guess other things, like the oft-discussed End of Days and the Y2K bug, were keeping them busy.
The funny way this affected me personally is that, instead of the normal 7-day cycles 99.999% of humanity has experienced, which mean that one celebrates birthdays on the same weekday every 7 years, I got a little spanner thrown into the works. It took an extra year to complete the cycle, and so, my 50th birthday fell on a Saturday, when it should never have done so. This will not be possible again... until 2400.
I spent that funny Saturday at home. My home is quite strange: very small, with metal walls, cramped, drafty and noisy. It has very few amenities (I must find a toilet outside it), it's full of complicated equipment, and, by coincidence, it is 40 years old this summer.
It also has big windows, a great view, a big fan out front, and it is hung from two wings.
It took me exactly 44 of my 50 years to be able to go home. And now, I spent my 50th Saturday in the place I wanted to be since that first one, long ago... for there is no record, no witness of any day, any moment in these long years when I have not wanted to go home.
On a Saturday in May, I went home. Home to the sky, between the rock and the void.
