boo hoo wah wah

I just realized I have to reset the clocks. I do not possess the vocabulary (and could not spell the words if I did) to express my absolute loathing for Daylight Savings Time. You see, for a significant portion of my life the Great State of Indiana did not participate in that nonsense. Our clocks were always right. Of course, that meant half the year we were on Eastern Time and the balance on Central. For businesses in the State and those unfortunate souls that resided near the Ohio, Kentucky and Illinois borders, the never changing time was a nightmare. A few years ago Indiana joined most of the nation and climbed aboard the 'change your clock twice a year bandwagon'.

When first mandated, I suggested we boycott the biannual ritual and remain on standard time here at the old homestead. The wife nixed that idea right out of the chute. She is time-challenged enough without adding an additional burden of clock-math in the morning. You see, she is of the opinion that the time set for appointments, starting work and arrivals is a mere guideline. To her credit my constant harping on that subject for the 30 years we have known each other has started to improve her habits. She makes herself be on time through setting the bedroom clock eleven minutes fast. How that can work I have no idea, since she knows the clock is eleven minutes fast. Since everything is about me I now have the burden of setting the alarm eleven minutes after I want to get up, to get up on time. I swear I will never understand the female mind.

Of course, DST does not save daylight. Old Sol shines the number of hours it does regardless of the o'clock proclaimed on our various time pieces. Nor does it reduce power usage. Now we will just turn our lights on in the morning instead of the evening. As an added bonus the kids can go back to leaving for the bus stop in the dark of night.

Given the imagined energy crisis we face as a world, shouldn't we be saving energy year-round? Why is daylight only important in the summer? I should think we would want to save daylight in the winter when there is less of it. If we went on DST for a month, then off for a month, alternating year round we could save 6 hours of daylight each year! Calculating the therms, watts, lumins or whatever is used to measure light we would make AlGore's puny carbon-offsets look a joke. What did you say? Carbon offsets are a joke already? Oh.

On the bright side, I can use this as an opportunity to synchronize the various digital clocks to read the same. In addition, DST does function as a handy reminder to check the smoke detectors.