Let's focus instead on other major events (not those that come around only every thousand years). Like the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Walk, an event that spurs scores of calls to our offices, asking when it is. The Bay Bridge Walk is May 2. People will still call.

And then there are the St. Patrick's Day parades (March 6 in Alexandria, March 14 in Washington), and if your stamina holds up you can celebrate eight days from the first marching band to the last piper. Another very popular event is the Armed Forces Open House at Andrews Air Force Base. The sky will be busy with jets and parachutists at that annual event May 15-16.

And of course there are some new events, so new that you wouldn't even know they are coming. In this category you can find the Bud Light Cup, a show of professional bull riders, Feb. 12-13 at USAirways Arena; "The Wizard of Oz," starring Mickey Rooney, Feb. 24-March 14 at the National Theatre; and the June 21 opening of American Prairie, the National Zoo's new habitat, which will star those cute and perky prairie dogs.

But, let's be candid. The year's most ballyhooed event will take place at the end of the year. By that stroke of midnight, you will have been inundated by special reports, chronologies, endless best and worst lists and expert analysis ad infinitum. And while we don't yet know what we're doing to mark the event, we hope, in time, to offer you some interesting, offbeat and unusual ways to mark the date change. But don't call and ask us when it is.

Please.

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