The other day I was checking the car rego and for a brief few moments was rattled to discover that I had not renewed it for several months.
Because the little shiny card with all the dates and details on it that you slide into its little nest on the front windscreen was reading "2018".
"Crikey," my brain murmured.
"It's way off."
Because for that brief moment I was under the impression that as of January 1 we had moved into the year of 2019.
I've often been a day or so out but to be a year out is a tad worrying.
Time is like the weather.
It can be unpredictable and both these factors of life rule the way things are done and the way things ultimately transpire.
You organise an outdoor event and it rains then plans have to be changed.
You either find an indoor location or you choose a new date, and in the case of the latter you hope the new date will have a chat with the weather and do you a favour.
However, I have a vague memory of one such occasion when such weather-driven changes were made (for a barbecue or something) and I suggested a new date and we'd fire it up then.
Except I got the date number wrong.
I thought the date I suggested was a Sunday ... but it was a Saturday ... which meant when that day came around some people also came around.
Which meant my plans to watch the one-day cricket international on telly went up in smoke ... kind of like the rissoles I overheated.
I don't know how really busy and committed people do it.
I don't know how they can juggle days and times and get it all right for there is only a certain amount of room on the average calender page to scrawl words and draw rings around numbers.
I guess they have "people" to do that for them.
Make the arrangements, set the times.
Or they have simply mastered the art of setting their little mobile computer tablets or phones and things and get a little beeping reminder a few hours out from an agreed upon appointment.
I wouldn't need just a beep.
I'd need a full-on siren.
Given my penchant for getting the actual year wrong I doubt I could master those complex phone diary and reminder apps.
This was evident a couple of days ago when I made a simple phone call.
And got the wrong number.
But hey, the 6 is so close to the 9 and they look the same ... sort of.
When the chap at the other end answered I said "Gidday, how's it all going?"
He replied it was all going very well and asked how things were going for me.
So I gave him a run-down of how I fell out of the tree and damaged a few muscles and bones and he said I hoped I was recovering okay by now.
"Yeah, still a tender around the old elbow and I think I've chipped a little bone in my foot but nothing too major."
He said I should get that checked just in case as once he did his knee in during a fall and it came back to haunt him a few years later.
Then he asked who the hell I was.
And I told him and asked if he was the bloke I thought I had rung.
"No, I think you've got the wrong number," he laughed, before suggesting I stay away from climbing trees in the future before he said his farewell.
When I did return to making the call I had intended to make I pushed every little digit very slowly, and very firmly, and very carefully.
And it turned out to be engaged anyway.
Numbers and dates and times and things will, I'm sure, continue to confound me although I have bought a bigger calender to write things on and draw circles around the numbers on.
And hey, it's February already. Blimey, it'll be 2017 before we know it.