Saturday, November 05, 2011

Fall behind!

Tonight's the night where we set our clocks back an hour. (And how come we still call Standard Time "standard" when we're down to using it only about a third of the year?)

This is a splendid time to change the batteries in your smoke detectors and in the red-dot optics on your social guns.

This is also the time when I have to bring the solar-spectrum lamp back down from the attic, because they just don't put enough sunshine coupons in our ration books around here this time of year to keep me happy.

17 comments:

Bubblehead Les. said...

"Let's do the Time Warp again! First you jump to the Left, then you step to the Right. Put your hands on your hips...."

Wait a minute. Are we talking about the Time Change or Mitt Romney's Campaign?

genedunn said...

I just got some solar-spectrum light bulbs for the overhead in my office. They look a little goofy, but they put out some awesome light and I don't to use the desk lamp!

Fred said...

Your not alone with the lamps... even worse when you're stuck on overnights.

Home on the Range said...

I say - leave the clocks where they are and turn our bathroom scales back 10 pounds.

Opening day of Elk Season here, back yard full of insolent elk that know I didn't get a permit.

wordverification: chive (as in "chive talking?"

Tam said...

Brigid,

Gotta love psychic woodland critters.

Go to the woods in deer season, the place is crawling with squirrel.

Come back during squirrel season, however...

Gewehr98 said...

SAD lights are the shiznatt! (Learned about them in Fairbanks, myself...)

Marja said...

Lots of vitamin D3 and solar-spectrum bulbs seem to be a good combination. Have been using the bulbs, plus one special lamp, for about nine years, but they alone didn't do the trick. I've been a lot better the last two winters after I also started using 5000 iu of D3 per day. And fish oil.

I'm not completely the same as during the summer, even with those, though. But I live above the 60th parallel.

And I was born about 20 years too early. Seasonal affective disorder was 'discovered' just a bit too late for me, I spend 20 years of my adult life while being pretty badly dysfunctional during the winters while doctors mostly told me to get therapy for depression - therapy as in 'tell me about your problems'. Didn't exactly help. Then somebody finally figured out that my depression usually got magically better, or sometimes completely cured, when the summer came.

Well, I actually figured it out myself a couple of years before one doctor finally took the idea seriously. You see, we have this free medical care in my country, which means that you do get pretty good treatment if you, say, break your leg, but anything which might require the doctor to spend some time trying to figure out what exactly is wrong with you will probably take a while, since the doctor usually is able to devote something like maybe about 20 minutes, maximum, to listen to your problems after you finally manage to get that appointment. And earlier you usually ended up with a different doctor if you got a new time - although I have to admit that has gotten a bit better, now they at least try to keep your care in the hands of the same doctor, and you can even try to chance doctors if you don't like the earlier one. Although the doctors usually get into private practice as soon as they are able, so there is a lot of turnover.

Yes, I'm a bit bitter, I guess. I dropped out of university because of SAD, for one thing.

AuricTech said...

We don't mess with Father Time here in Arizona. ;-)

wv - prera: The sun god the ancient Egyptians had before Ra.

Anonymous said...

Can I sleep-through it and wake up when it is summer again? I'd move to Arizona, but then I'd have to summer in the Arctic.
The ancient's worshipped the sun and fire for a reason - the Zoroastrians fire because up there in the Caucasus above Persia where they originated, there's places so chock-full of hydrocoarbons that it erupts forth up from the ground in flames - a burning bush you ask? Hell they had burning dirt, and then someone invented the notion of Hell as a flaming pit...

Keads said...

Don't forget the chronograph batteries! The only time I ever see a low/dead battery with that thing is at the range! How can this be?

the pawnbroker said...

Agitatin' for a new normal are we?

There's justification for both standard and savings times I guess, although personally I prefer old-school.

But mainly I just wish they'd pick a lane and stay in it; all this arbitrary manipulation is like working the swing shift, and I hated that shit.

Eric said...

Colorado has an average of 300 sunny days per year. Just tossing that out there for you.

Borepatch said...

It's also time to thank our Congress for giving us back what we gave to them in the spring (one hour of sleep).

All the taxes we pay are but a pittance ...

Joanna said...

I'm pretty sure it's called "Standard" because we are now in sync with the sun.

Tam said...

Yeah, but "sync with the sun" hasn't mattered since the invention of the electric light bulb.

It's a three-shift world, now.

Thomas Smith said...

Went to bed at 9 ish and woke up at elevensies to that much ballyhooed 5.6 on the Richter scale.

Joanna said...

I meant the clocks are in sync with the sun -- noon happens at, well, noon, instead of 1 o'clock.

I still think DST is a travishamockery.