[miscalculation of Dragaeran year length snipped] To cut-and-paste from the introductory matter of my Dragaera Timeline: There are 30 hours in a day (PG 142, et al). References are made to hours 'of the morning' and 'after noon', so they have AM and PM as we do, just with 15 hours in each half, not 12. Note that four meals a day is standard (PG 405, 433), so they eat roughly as often as Terrans do. [There are a few references in early books to 24-hour days, but these are almost certainly "translations" on Brust's part.] Hours have 60 minutes (FH 256). Hours and minutes are apparently identical to their Terran counterparts, and were presumably established by the original Terran colonists (see below). There are 17 months in the year, of 17 days each (PG 59). Both days and months are named after the Houses. There may be 'calendar hacks' such as the Terran Leap Year, but none have so far been mentioned, and their impact is likely to be small in any case. This works out to a year of about 8,670 hours, as compared with a Terran year of about 8,736 hours, so the length of the year is almost identical to a Terran year, which fits with various references to Easterner's ages and life expectancies. Alexx Alexx Kay Opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily those of my employers alexx at world.std.com http://world.std.com/~alexx (At the Bad Habit there was some brief discussion of how many things one could do at once. For instance, is it possible to have net access, a job, a social life, and be romantically involved with one or more people? I believe the consensus was "yes, but you don't get to sleep...") -- Sean McGuire