Ash Wednesday: two observations

It is Ash Wednesday today, the beginning of Lent. This is something I blogged about often before, yearly or nearly yearly in fact, mostly about my experience of it when I was growing up as a then Catholic boy, today I just want to make two ether mundane observations on the subject:

-Ash Wednesday means that Easter is getting closer.
-Ash Wednesday also means that Easter is still very far away.

Not sure if it means I am a fatalist, or if I see the glass as both half-full and half-empty, but there you go.