One of the best things about the new year…
…is getting a new calendar.
Randy and I have started the tradition of getting the most ridiculous calendars we can find. (Well, I sort of dragged him into the tradition by gifting him a ridiculous calendar every year, until he expressed a desire to have more say in the process.)
Examples from years past:
The 2007 “D is for Dog” Calendar
(Our 2006 calendar was a gift from a friend. It was nice, but not noteworthy in its oddness.)
The 2005 Ferrets Calendar featuring Ferrets playing musical instruments (I think this is the one that made Randy decide he wanted to be included in the calendar selection. He said the ferrets weirded him out.)
2004 was a calendar featuring dogs made out of fruits and vegetables. And it came with stickers!
We were at the mall yesterday when we saw that the seasonal calendar kiosk had slashed their prices by 50 percent. It was time to go calendar shopping.
Randy lobbied hard for the Trout of the Month calendar. Which, I admit, would have been awesome. But it was kind of a weird shape. And a wall calendar must, above all, be functional. I tried to convince him that we needed a calendar featuring some neo-Hansen two-preteen-brothers boy band, but that was dismissed as “creepy.”
Things were starting to get desperate. But then I saw it. The perfect calendar for us. A little bit of whimsy balanced with a dead-serious approach to the subject. A sense that the calendar photographer saw this as an opportunity to make some real art, not just tell people what day it is.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet our 2008 calendar.
The 2008 Precious Piggy Calendar
Pigs, dressed up in little outfits, shot in gauzy black-and-white, a style similar to many of the wedding photographers whose portfolios we reviewed.
January featured a baby piggy in a birthday hat, eating cake. There is frosting all over its little pig nose. Randy did not appear to be as overwhelmed by the preciousness as I was, but I’m sure he was just covering up his feelings, so as not to ruin his manly cred.
Life doesn’t get much more exciting than this.
I’m looking around my desk at my three new calendars. My favorite is the one my sister made with pictures of my nephews. But my absolute necessity is the Word of the Day calendar that I’ve been getting for several years.
Yesterday’s word: Aesopian — conveying an innocent meaning to an outsider but a hidden meaning to a member of a conspiracy or underground movement.
Love that s**t.