NEW YEAR'S DAY! Another year has passed. Where does the time go?

This is 2013. Will it be an unlucky year--you know, the 13 part? I'm not superstitious, mind you, but I'm going to be really careful with mirrors, and I'm not going to walk under any ladders until 2014 arrives.

And black cats better steer clear of me this year.

Maybe 2013 will be luckier than 2012, which was a bummer. We can do without the shootings, high unemployment rates and fiscal cliffs this year, thank you very much.

New Year's Day is kind of a strange holiday. It doesn't have the sanctity of Christmas or Easter, the romance of Valentine's Day or the patriotic connotations of Memorial Day or the Fourth of July.

About all we celebrate today is college football--and if you don't like college football you know how an agnostic feels on Christmas Day.

For the past week there have been bowl games, Grandma. Every college team with 11 players is in some kind of a bowl game, it seems.

The big bowls always draw crowds of alumni but at some of those lesser-known bowls (like the Dog's Bowl or the Cat's Bowl--there actually is a Puppy Bowl) the stands look like those at a high school lacrosse game on a cold March night, when only parents and girlfriends show up.

Of course, bowls don't rely so much on fans as they do on TV revenue, and while it might be the Doo-Doo Bowl, the sports commentators make it out to be the greatest game the world has ever known.

Men who don't get excited about football can probably get away with going hunting or doing some outside work today. Women would never let that happen on Christmas, but things are a bit more relaxed on New Year's Day.

Men might even get so bored with the holidays that they will offer to take their wives or girlfriends to the movies tonight. There are a couple of new flicks that even I would like to see.

Of course, no one has a clue what the new year will bring. We just hope for the best and pray that we all make it until the next holiday season.