Tuesday, March 10, 2015

We Sprung Ahead

Sunday we sprung ahead with our clocks. Loosing the hour that we had gained in the fall. I didn’t have much of a problem on Sunday but Monday was another story. I got up and both Linus and Charlie woke up and looked at me like I was crazy. They said to me why the hell are you up so early. Of course they don’t understand the intricacies of day light savings time. To be honest sometimes I don’t either.

It is of course wonderful to have the extra hour of day light at the end of the day. Hopefully with winter over (this is still a big if. I’m reminded of the fact that the biggest snowstorm DC had last year was on St. Patrick’s Day) it will mean being able to go for a walk after dinner.

The draw back of course is that is dark again when I leave the house. I headed out to the gym to go spinning yesterday and have to say I really didn’t notice it all that much. In part because I was tired. In fact I was tired the whole day and the whole day just seemed to drag. But I went straight to work today and really noticed when I came out of the subway to walk to my office. Wow it really is dark out. I have to say that left me a little depressed. It will take about another month for it to be light when I leave home in the morning. It makes a big difference if you leave as it is starting to get light as opposed to leaving in total darkness. Several people at the spinning class had the same thing to say.

The Post had a great article about daylight savings time: Five myths about daylight saving time. The first one I had always heard that we have it because farmers wanted it. That’s not true at all. In fact farmers were completely against it.

But the last myth is perhaps the best one:

Guess what time we’re on for eight months of the year? Daylight saving time. In what universe is something that happens for only one-third of the time the “standard”? Even before the 2007 change, DST ran for seven months out of 12.

In fact, some opponents of DST aren’t against daylight saving time per se: They think it should be adopted as the year-round standard time. Because it basically already is.

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