A Perpetual Calendar

Someone sent me a link to this idea for a perpetual calendar this past week and already I can't remember who it was, nor can I find the email with the link. Or maybe someone posted about it on Facebook, I can't be sure. (Apparently, my senior moments are happening more frequently now that I am fifty plus fourteen days!)  But I had the above photo in my mind so I searched it on Google images and found it here, in a blog post written by someone who got the idea here.

Anyhow, whomever it was, thank you for that link. It gave me what I think is a brilliant idea for my own perpetual calendar, which I intend to begin today.  I picked up this book earlier this year (once again, my memory fails me as I can't remember exactly where although I do know it was somewhere in West Virginia when I was visiting my friend Heather).

It's a journal from 1947 and it's called "Dr. Colwell's Daily Log for Physicians".  The pages are yellowed with age, about 7.5 x 9.5 inches in size and most are filled out in pencil by John B. Sullivan M.D. 

I found this description of the log book online:  "Bookkeeping for doctors and dentists is a special problem. Here is a loose leaf record book for listing on each day hours of appointments, names of patients, services rendered, whether charged or cash payment, and money on account. Extra pages provide suitable columns for summaries of monthly business, expenses, narcotics prescribed, obstetrics, and memorandums. The general practitioner who has to keep his own books while attending to all the other minutiae that occupy him will find the book convenient." I also found an advertisement listing a similar book for sale in 1953 for a mere $7.00 (which was probably a somewhat substantial sum in those days, considering it appears people were only paying $3 or $4 to visit this doctor!).

I also found this absolutely fascinating description of the couple who were responsible for creating this daily log book - you really should click here to read about it.

I was going to save the book to use in 2014, when the days of the week will match those from 1947 (did you know calendars repeat themselves every 6 or 11 years or so? Unless it's a leap year, in which case, you have to wait 28 years. It's true! Read about it here.).  But when I saw the above photo of the little cards in the fruit basket, I got the idea to use this log book as my own personal perpetual calendar, writing a line a year to indicate what I did that day.  Some of the pages in the book are quite full but even the fullest ones still have several blank lines that I can use, or I can always insert new pages.  The book itself has pins holding the pages in place, which can be removed simply and easily using a screwdriver. I can rearrange, remove or add pages as needed.

I think I'll go back to my birthday and start from that day (hopefully I can remember what I have done in the past 2 weeks, at least enough to write a one line blurb on each page!), so it will be a calendar that tracks my fifties as a starting point.  I am excited to begin!