Its very subtle for me. I don't remember phases of the moon and such. But I do internalize them so that I have a vague sense of time as I read these books. Its like a sense of direction. There's usually no obvious clue which tells me what is south and what is north, but a load of small cubtle clues add up.

The absence was really irritating, especially in ToM, and all the worse because it was initially hard to pinpoin why I was feeling bugged. Even as I rushed through the book and initially enjoyed the parade of interesting events in the book, this nagged me. Later, it became enough of a distraction that I'm certain ToM will be the least re-read of all the WoT books for me.