Checkin' in on New Year's: Was there a Year Zero?

 (620 words)As other revelers were nursing hangovers, making resolutions and game-planning for a new year’s worth of unpredictables, I did what on New Year’s Day I customarily do.I got out my checkbook.I wasn’t feeling philanthropic. I was feeling Gregorian. On each of the 40 checks, beside the half-blank “20   ” in the upper right corner, I wrote the double deuce, the “22” that designates the