April 2028: a month bracketed by weekends
April 2028 has opened well, if your idea of a good start is a weekend. The month began on Saturday 1 April. It will end on Sunday 30 April. That frame hands it five Saturdays and five Sundays, 10 weekend days against 20 business days. It is the gentlest working month of the half. The moon has taken Sunday shifts, with three phases arriving on them. And the first full week belongs, as ever, to Augusta.
Weekends at both ends
Saturdays arrive on the 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd and 29th. Sundays trail them by a day, on the 2nd, 9th, 16th, 23rd and 30th. The 30 days sit across ISO weeks 13 to 17, and five full weekends fit inside.
The working count comes to 20 business days, the lightest of the half. The first working week begins on Monday 3 April, straight after the opening weekend. A Saturday start makes no promises about easing anybody in.
Planners get a clean split: five weekends for the diary, 20 weekdays for the work. The weekend half fills first, as weekends do.
Three Sundays, three phases
First quarter falls on Sunday 2 April. The full moon follows on Sunday 9 April, and last quarter holds the pattern on Sunday 16 April. Three visible phases, three Sundays in a row.
Only the new moon breaks the run, on Monday 24 April. Sky watchers get a milestone each Sunday evening for three weeks, then a dark stretch for the fainter stars.
No eclipse falls this month. January took the year's first pair, and the next total eclipse of the sun belongs to 22 July. April's sky offers moons instead.
Augusta week, then the runway
The ninety-second Masters opens with practice days on Monday 3 April, running through Wednesday 5 April. Competition rounds follow from Thursday 6 April to Sunday 9 April at Augusta National in Georgia. The final round is decided under the full moon, on the month's second Sunday.
Badges come by lottery, and Augusta is a small city with limited beds. Practice days are the realistic ticket, and trips were priced long ago. Hope is not a strategy here, though plenty of people hold some anyway.
Beyond Augusta, the runway runs west. The Olympics open on Friday 14 July. From 30 April the wait runs roughly ten and a half weeks, and April is the final full month that keeps that countdown in double figures. The Olympic qualifiers are already crowding the schedules.
April 2028 closes on a Sunday evening with the weekend crowd spoiled. May begins the next morning, on a Monday, with 23 business days to its name.