Going back to Standard Time is hell on us nightowls. For six months or so, everything is as it should be. The sun comes up sometime after I’m done with it being dark, and doesn’t go down again until after I’ve had the right number of UV rays to keep me tan and happy.
Then the last Saturday in October comes, and things go horribly wrong.
I can deal with the time from the end of June, when the days get slowly shorter naturally, and of their own accord. My rhythms, the results of thousands of years spent in non-tropical climes, are evolved for changing seasons. I think of it the way the garbage disposal would consider its existence, if it had a sense of self: it wouldn’t like it, but does what it’s designed to do. All my pasty ancestors knew that colder weather means shorter days, and they coped with it. So do I.
But this Standard Time switch is a more recent invention. My forebears didn’t have to learn to like it, and I refuse to. For no good reason, I gain an hour of sunlight — while I’m sleeping — and lose an hour of it — when I’m just getting ready for fun stuff.
That, in a word, sucks.
[georgehamilton] No sunlight means no tan, and no tan means no happy. [/georgehamilton]
The adjustment takes a few days, which is why I had nothing to say on Monday. Instead of blogging or trying to figure out how to make some money in this crazy market, I woke up at 8:30, looked at the diminished sun in the skylights, and thought it’ll all be gone in eight hours.
It’s easier for morning people, of course. Even accidental morning people like my wife. She doesn’t want to be at work at 7:30, but if she has to, damnit, she doesn’t want to drive there in the dark. For her, losing Daylight Savings was something that should’ve happened a couple weeks ago. “But what about me?
“Now I have to grill dinner in the dark!”
To compensate, I went around the house turning on every light, and twisting all the dimmers up to Completely Non-Dimmed. Even in rooms I wasn’t going to use. When night came (early), anyway, I sat there in my over-illuminated living room, squinting at my book, muttering “it still isn’t bright enough.”
Of course it wasn’t. GE will never replace Old Sol.
The good news is, I’ll be cranky for a week or two, which should lead to some interesting blogging.
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