If you hadn't noticed, Tuesday marked the 10th anniversary of the IRA's first ceasefire. Then again, I suppose, it was difficult to ignore. Most media outlets ran features, commentary pieces or discussion programmes of one kind or another to mark the occasion, writes David Adams.
Last week, with immaculate timing, Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, arrived in town to promote the former US president's memoirs.
And, predictably enough, this sparked a sometimes heated and well-worn discussion - a lot of it conducted via the pages of this newspaper - around what significance should be given to Clinton's decision to grant a visa to Gerry Adams in the run-up to the ceasefire.
Following that came the equally predictable arguments about whether or not the decision itself was a good one and whether Clinton's role was really as important as we have been led to believe.
For the past few weeks as well we have had the former taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, popping up now and again to remind us, in case we should forget, of the hugely significant role he played in helping bring the IRA to cessation.
Success, as they say, has a thousand fathers.
And, make no mistake about it, the IRA ceasefire of 1994, despite the breakdown and the violations, can only be judged a success. It is, without question, by far the single most important thing to have happened in Northern Ireland for decades. Any forward movement since 1994 has flowed directly from the IRA's decision to call a ceasefire.
The loyalist ceasefire in October of that year, imperfect though that has been, was only possible because of it. The Belfast Agreement, a publicly endorsed template on internal Northern Ireland governance taking account of and catering for all the various aspirations and relationships, would be no more than a pipe dream without the IRA's declaration.
In short, Northern Ireland politics would still be in the deep freeze and the conflict would still be raging. Before August 31st, 1994, there was simply no prospect for political development.
Since then, and completely unimaginable a decade ago, the IRA has decommissioned some of its weaponry and looks set to do so again. And it is now clear that it has no intention of returning to "war". There have been more than enough opportunities to restart its campaign if it was of a mind to.
With so many hiccups, stoppages and tests in the process to date, even the most unimaginative P. O'Neill could have come up with a plausible-sounding get-out clause if he were so inclined. But the only exit strategy the IRA seems to be preparing for is the one that sees it going out of business entirely.
And all of that, without mentioning the hundreds of people who are still alive today but undoubtedly wouldn't be, if the IRA was still prosecuting its campaign of violence.
So it really doesn't matter who claims maximum credit, Bill, Albert or whoever, the fact that people like them still want to - people who aren't particularly famed for knowingly attaching themselves to failed projects - speaks for itself.
There have been some unfortunate byproducts of the ceasefires as well: inter-community violence at interfaces, the laying off of hundreds of prison officers and security staff and a seeming rise in sectarian attitudes being some of the more obvious.
Alhough a lot of the interface violence has been orchestrated by the paramilitaries themselves, the irony is that communities have only felt able to vent anger in this way because bricks are now thrown instead of blast bombs and there is no longer the same risk of a gunman from one side or the other opening up with a sub-machinegun.
It is true that with reduced paramilitary activity and, consequently, fewer prisoners to deal with, many security and prison staff have lost their jobs, but the only way to have avoided that was for us to have had no ceasefires. Besides, generous redundancy packages must have softened the blow somewhat.
As for an increase in sectarian attitudes: how can we possibly judge? What is there to measure against? It isn't as though, when bullets were flying and bombs were going off, people thought it important enough to keep stock.
Sectarianism existed long before the Troubles started; perhaps it's only lately that there has been enough room for it to make its way back on to the radar screen. Punishment beatings continue but, as now seems certain, when republicans move to endorse policing that should help ease the problem within nationalist areas at least.
Ten years after the event, the deep unionist suspicion of secret deals having been done between the British government and republicans to facilitate the ceasefire has been shown, self-evidently, to be groundless.
The most muted response to the anniversary has come from republicans themselves.
A political process still stalled a decade on from the ceasefire didn't, I'm sure, form any part of the republican script. And I'm quite sure as well, if such a situation had been foreseen, despite the best efforts of Bill, Albert et al, there might well not have been any script.