it's about time

"where is the last place it turns new years anyway?"

the question came at me from a dear friend- something of a hot shot in the realm of specialized publishing (despite his protests of humility)- who shares a love of writing. as he bounced around his thoughts of a fictional storyline focusing on time zones, he tossed this question out on the fly, but it stuck with me through breakfast.

where was it still 2008, while the rest of us were already deeply mucked into breaking our 2009 new year resolutions? this seems the type of thing people should just know. i didn't know. in fact... i didn't have a clue. should i be appalled at myself for being so ignorant? regardless, i now had a question which required an answer.

i turned to the compu-junky's best friend, google, and, oh, the things i discovered! i knew about the prime meridian, and greenwich mean time being of central importance, but how far did a day go either way? where did one day meet another? the concept of the international date line sounded like one i'd heard and conveniently disregarded due to it's clear lack of pertinence to my daily life. there, looking at the date line in its hap- hazard wiggle-waggle between island chains in the pacific lay the answer to the question. samoa looks like the last good place to ring in the new year (wait... isn't a samoa a girl scout cookie? can i get a time zone patch for my sash now?)!

the most interesting thing i read during my research was that for a particular 2 hour time frame in a day, there are three different days in operation on our planet. i didn't see that one coming, and i find it really amazing. don't you? living so far from that part of the world allows for such "out of sight, out of mind" about such things.

so now you know. if you have a good year that you want to keep for an extra long time- head to samoa.