Don't like Mondays? Hmmm.

Nothing conjures up that negative, blue side of our dispositions like a Monday. It's been immortalized in song over the years, and not in a good way. The Bangles sang that it's Just Another Manic Monday, while in Monday, Monday, the Mamas and the Papas summed up the mood in a tone so melancholy that we all should steer clear of sharp objects, bridges and bottles of valium while listening to it.

And who can forget I Don't Like Mondays, the Boomtown Rats' true ballad of a 16-year-old girl who shot randomly into an elementary schoolyard across the street from her house, killing two and wounding eight. When asked why she'd committed such a horrific act, she replied, "I just did it for the fun of it. I don't like Mondays." Apparently.

Our Monday morning today in Seattle is the epitome of a blue Monday: a dank, rainy follow-up to a brilliant pair of 70-degree weekend days. Since today is perfect fodder for that damp blanket of bum-outedness, I'm going to attempt to spin this whole most-depressing-day thing on its ear. So, here we go.

Since I'm an average American guy, my life span is expected to be 75.2 years, or 27,448 days. Doesn't seem like that many days, does it? If we truly despise each and every Monday of our lives, that eliminates 3,921 days, or 10.75 years, from our lives. That would put my "quality" lifespan at 64.5 years. Whoa.

Taken to the extreme, let's assume, as Loverboy once said, that everybody's Workin' for the Weekend. This would imply that our quality lifespan now consists only of Fridays, Saturdays, and most of Sundays (Sunday nights are part of the work week, in my opinion.) Now, a guy my age would enjoy himself only 3/7 of the time, which is a mere 11,763 days, or 32.2 years.

Talk about depressing. I don't know about you, but 32 years of quality time doesn't quite cut if for me. So come on. Let's grab this Monday, and every other day of the week, by the horns. If we don't, we're allowing ourselves the lifespan of someone who grabbed the woolly mammoth by the horns.