Saturday, November 05, 2011

Buddy, Can You Spare the Time?


Tonight most states in the country are going to turn their clocks back one hour, resuming "Standard Time" and kicking Daylight Savings Time to the curb for about four months.  Arizona and Hawaii still haven't figured out how to set their clocks, so as far as they are concerned, we are the ones returning to the fold, because they never switched over to that newfangled time system in the first place.  I can't begin to explain the state of Indiana.  Whatever time it is wherever you happen to be in the Hoosier State is undoubtedly not the time you that it was, so just buy a broken watch and consider yourself covered.

We seem to do an enormous amount of complaining when we switch to Daylight Savings Time because of the lost hour of sleep.  You'd think we'd do a proportionate amount of rejoicing in the fall when we gain the hour back again.  That doesn't really seem to be the case.  In the fall we're a little more business-like, doing chores that need to be done, but otherwise keeping the same routine while we settle in for a longer winter's nap.  Come springtime though, the complaining goes into overdrive and we run around like our pants are on fire.  I don't know why -- none of that helps.  We're still going to wake up too early in the fall and too late in the spring . We are going to blame our clocks, our televisions, the Internet, the newspapers we don't get anymore, pets and the power company.  We'll be exhausted for about a week and we'll become very poor drivers.  The gift of one extra hour of sleep will immediately be erased by the fact that now it's dark when you get up in the morning and it's dark when you leave work in the afternoon. 

Right now, though, is the fun time.  After spending far too much time resetting all the clocks in the house (somehow I have FIVE in my kitchen) I'm in no-man's land. My watch and all the clocks in the house except one all say 10:05 pm (Renegade clock made in Arizona. 'Nuff said).  My computer, my car, my VCR and my phone say 11:05 pm. Most of these will change themselves at 2 am, and the car I leave for the teenager.  Television programs think it's later.  Bars think it's earlier.  It's the opposite of  the morning after the time change, when no matter what time it is, you're wrong.  Right now, in this three hour window, no matter what time it is, you're right. Winning!

It must be time to take a nap.

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