Eek, since I was born during a dragon year, that means that I'm hitting another multiple of twelve. Damn I'm old.

You and me both octothorpe...

Well, in 3 years, I hit the Big 5 Cycles... but the Chinese Zodiac rundown reminds me...

Goat (we football fans in L.A. used to call it 'Ram')
1919, 1931, 1943, 1955, 1967, 1979, 1991
Positive traits: Righteous, sincere, sympathetic, mild-mannered, shy, artistic, creative, gentle, compassionate, understanding, mothering, determined, peaceful, generous, seeks security.
Negative traits: Can be moody, indecisive, over-passive, worrier, pessimistic, over-sensitive, complainer, weak-willed.

Yep, I am definitely in there somewhere.

There are football fans in LA?

There WERE, when the Rams played there. A series of creative disillusionings (They moved to ANAHEIM? We're supposed to LIKE the Raiders now? They all left? Okay.) cured most of us.

This year the Horse (me) has issues with love and the Tiger (the mister) has issues with matters of the heart.

I'm suppose to separate my personal and private life. Ok. Sure.

It's everybody's birthday!

I don't really think Lunar New Year is any more or less inclusive or superstitious than anyone else's religious holiday or new year. I like it because I like holidays, but it's a holiday in certain traditions, not in others, and dragons, after all, are not real.

Though in the spirit of celebration, here's the great The Big Picture for today.

I kept almost posting this but stopped: by everybody's birthday, I mean everybody ages a year on the Lunar Calendar. And there are a variety of traditions and superstitions, but I've been having an Angry Asian moment since the day after MLK, with the constant stream of complaints about "white male conservative oppression" I am subjected to most of the week by this privileged ignorant kid who totally is trolling me. I'm taking it up with Multicultural Affairs tomorrow. Kid needs to be forced to take a soc class or something.

And generally, any new year/cycle by any calendar is a significant enough celebration to get the day off.

As far as real, there is no worship of dragons or animals. There's a general lack of confusion around symbol and metaphor, which would be nice elsewhere.

Well, that depends somewhat on individual perspective.

In any case, it's not materially different from any other religious observance. In the case of any religion or any holiday, some people will consider it "symbol and metaphor," while others believe their participation in ritual activity has an actual supernatural effect. There are many ritual activities which are observed in hopes of influencing outcomes through magical means - that's not exclusive to any one religion, that is associated with almost all religion. This is a holiday and not just a festival, and it carries that connotation.

The "everybody's birthday" thing makes sense to me now that you mention the way individual chronological ages are calculated, I'd forgotten about that.

I'm all for as many days off as possible. Let's have more religions and more holidays and more festivals and commemmorations so we can have more days off.