Thanks for the information. Do you enter birthdays every year? Or just use sed or something to update the year? If you delete everything after the date, I guess you never need to refer to old appointments?
"My contacts list is a text file called contacts.txt. Works on anything. Can be grepped. My calendar is a text file called cal.txt. Works on anything. Can be grepped."
I really like the sound of that. Can you elaborate a bit on the format, or provide a couple of sample lines from each?