Can’t remember when I first heard the bromide “the first day of the rest of your life,” although it may have been in the Pleistocene era when my age was in the single digits and the only whiskers ever on my face were those of my father when he hugged me. I have the recollection, which may be entirely engineered, that I found it deeply profound, altering my view of something or other. As with cliché, the trite bromide is, if not profound, then at least useful because it can be true — like the broken clock that’s correct twice a day.

Today may be the first day of the rest of my life, but it is not the first day of my new life. That comes in a couple weeks. For my dear readers in other countries who visit my site regularly to post spam comments (can you please not? It’s a real administrative pain and I have filtering software), there will be more on this later.