October 8th is my favorite day of the year for no reason other than it’s a Double Eight Day. Perhaps it will surprise you to learn that I was born in 1988, so of course I have a sort of affinity for the number eight. Sorry, everyone . . . it’s the best number. It’s an infinity symbol standing upright. It even looks cool as a Roman numeral:

VIII

Wow . . .

Unfortunately, October is no longer the eighth month of the year. We can thank King Numa Pompilius for that. Apparently back then they essentially just ignored the winter months after December because no farming took place then. Oops! So eventually they had to create January and February on account of 10 months does not constitute a year . . . and thus October became the tenth month and, over a thousand years later, I became a January Baby.

(By the way: January is named for Janus, the two-faced Roman god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and endings. I love all that stuff. With one face, he gazes into the past, and with the other he gazes into the future. Naturally, Janus is an auspicious god for which to name the first month of the new year . . .)

Two years ago around this time, McCune and I ate a bunch of mushrooms and hung out by the American River in Sacramento all night. There was a full moon and everything . . . and I was with Zak “Flipped the Truck Over the Moon” McCune himself:

At some point during our hours-long drug-fueled ramblings, which I’m sure would have been insufferable to any eavesdroppers hiding in the bushes, we remarked that October, as word, sounds like what it is. It has a sort of rustic feeling to it! Just as August sounds fiery. I think about that every October now.

ANYWAY

That’s it! That’s all I wanted to say! I love October 8th!!!