Thursday Threesome

Time to: Are you a punctual person, always on time? Or do people have to tell you that everything starts an hour earlier than it really does, just so you'll be on time? Or are you somewhere in between?

I'd say somewhere in between, although lately it seems as if I'm always behind somehow. A coupon gets forgotten, the printer runs too long, I start working on a web page and time disappears. But if we need to be on time, we are.

Spring: After a long week, what puts a spring in your step? How do you spend your downtime?

By not getting up early. I'm a night person. I've been a night person since I was a baby and woke my mom up--good thing she didn't have a job outside the house--to play in the wee hours of the morning. I only get rested up well on the weekends, and then it's back to six hours sleep at the most and getting lightheaded under the fluorescents. Downtime? I like to read, watch the occasional DVD, work on web pages, commune with the budgie, and spend time with "the mister."

Forward: As we enter Daylight Savings Time and the clocks spring forward, do you like having that "extra" hour of daylight or would you rather just not mess with it? Or do you live in an area that doesn't follow DST?

A question on which I have very strong feelings. I hate, hate, hate Daylight Saving Time. Maybe it was all those great books I got dragged away from by being forced to "go out and play in the fresh air" (read "bitten by every mosquito west of the Providence River"), but I've hated DST since I was a kid. It being light outside didn't change my bedtime!

It's still annoying, in fact even more so. Last week I was driving to work in the daylight, just after sunrise, granted, but it was daylight. Now it's pitch-bloody-dark again. Mornings are supposed to be light. Night is supposed to be dark. What on earth do we need an extra hour of daylight for anyway? It was fine during World Wars I and II, when this nonsense started. Factories didn't have the type of lighting we do now and many of them relied on the natural light coming in through big walls of windowpanes and through skylights. That extra hour, and in some cases extra two hours (there was something called "Double War Time" in WWII) was a godsend to munitions factories, aircraft plants, farmers, etc. Now all buildings have adequate lighting and all playgrounds and parks have big floodlights. Farm equipment includes large floods as well. Kids are usually at organized activities, not playing on the streets, and the ones who are–well, remembering my own childhood, dark never stopped us from playing. We'd gather under streetlights or stop under the outside lights of someone's house.

The big "thing" about DST is it is supposed to "save energy" because you don't have to turn your lights on as early. What is forgotten is that in most places in the summer it doesn't start to get cooler until the sun goes down. So while you don't have to put your lights on in that hour, your air conditioner, which sucks many times more power than those few incandescent lights, is still roaring on "high" because it's broiling outside. From my POV, DST causes more energy use, not less. I've never heard of power problems when people turn on all their Christmas lights. I have heard of brownouts and even blackouts when every air conditioner in town is blasting under the merciless summer sun.

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 8:44:00 AM

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