[quigonkenny]

Some thoughts on the timing of the series.

No Japanese newspaper is going to list the date as 7/7/07, I would think. At best it's going to be 2007/7/7, or more likely 平成19年7月7日 or 2007年7月7日 to reflect the Japanese way of writing the date. That last one, particularly using the Gregorian year, is possibly what the author intended, but the 17th year of the Heisei era was 2005, and would also generate a date (平成17年7月7日) with three 7's in a row.

It's a shame that Haruhi doesn't take Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei's lead on pretending the Showa era never ended, as that would give us a 2002 Tanabata date of 昭和77年7月7日. Of course, four (shi = death) 7's would make it unlucky...

Of course, any indication of Tanabata (2009年7月7日, for example) is going to look somewhat "lucky" with the number of 7's in it.