Flavian calendar reform

At about this time every year, I start operating according to my own Very Special Calendar.

My summer begins around May 15 or May 20th, after I've submitted my grades and my annual faculty activity report, and it ends a week before Labor Day. This means that I have 13 or 14 weeks of summer--absolute oceans of time in which to write. But as August winds down and I look with increasing apprehension at the to-do lists that I came up with in May, I start reassuring myself that summer doesn't really end until September 21st.

Now, if the past few years are any indication, I'm actually quite productive during August and the first few weeks of September--deadlines and the fear of public shame will do that to a girl--and refusing to admit that summer is OVER also keeps me from spending too much time worrying (or really even thinking) about my new classes.

But what this means is that my "summer" somehow becomes 18 weeks long, during which I get at best nine weeks' worth of work done--and by "nine weeks" I mean not nine 40-hour weeks, but whatever the writing/research equivalent is: twenty hours? thirty?

The Flavian Calendar, you see, also involves some Very Special Math.