The turning of the seasons...

Let us hoist the wassail cup!

And we'll bicycle around the block at 7:00PM without needing a headlight!

Someone elsewhere grumped that if people wanted to take advantage of more daylight, we should just change our schedules, to which I retorted:

Oh, good idea! I'll just change my schedule. And I'll get my employer and all the places I shop and all my friends to change their schedule, too, since changing just mine would be kind of pointless. I think I'll call it "Daylight Savings Time".

Since this is all just arbitrarily agreed-upon convention, we can keep DST year-round for all I care. Having sunset at close-of-business is ridiculous.

Rites of Spring

The equinox has arrived and, thanks to Daylight Savings Time, we've seized that useless hour of daylight from the morning, where it was only being used by farmers, poultry, and joggers, and redistributed it to the rest of us. 

Sunset in Indianapolis tonight is only a few minutes shy of eight o'clock. If Bobbi and I decide to run to Meijer after she gets off work tonight, it won't be in the dark.

Today's high temps will be back into the 50s.

Yay!

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I blame the government.

Stupid Daylight Savings Time...

The Sunday Smith isn't finished, but it's beddie-bye time for me.

Tomorrow morning, then.

I know it makes me lose Hoosier street cred...

...but I like Daylight Savings Time.

For one thing, it shuts my winter blahs off like a switch. I know that it's just a bit of horological legerdemain, that we're sawing an hour off one end and gluing it to the other, but six thirty is just a damned depressing time for the sun to be setting and somehow calling that time "seven thirty" instead makes everything better.

A brief note on the ending of Daylight Savings Time.

They say that moving the ending of DST back one week was to save power, but I think that's a lie. I think it was done after intensive lobbying by the American Psychiatric Association in order to combat a recent downturn in people suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder. There is just nothing like watching the sun set while you're still stuck in rush hour traffic to make you want to open a vein.

On the bright side, supposedly a lot more pedestrians get bunted into the Great Beyond around this time every year which, depending on the pedestrian, is not necessarily a bad thing. For instance, the pedestrian may have been jogging.

Daylight Savings Time...

1. Set the clocks forward one hour
2. Change the batteries in your smoke detectors
3. Put fresh batteries in any lights or powered optics on work guns

That last one is easy to forget or put aside these days when the batteries in a modern optic have service lives measured in years, but it's cheap insurance.

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I love Daylight Savings Time....

...but it's real hard to feign much enthusiasm about it at what my hindbrain is telling me is 0mygod30 in the AM.

I'm abandoning my roomie to her typing and heading to Nat'l Gun Day in L'ville. Back later!

Vacation, all I've ever wanted...

So roomie was on vacation last week, leading to a couple of observations:

• Vacationitis is apparently contagious. I found myself sleeping in a lot, too.
• Coffee consumption at Roseholme Cottage doubles during vacation.
• The only thing harder than going from Standard Time to Daylight Savings Time is going straight from Vacation Time to DST. Bobbi, like me, appears to be quasi-nocturnal by nature; left to my own devices, my day would run from noon to 4AM or so. It felt like the alarm clock went off at 0300 this morning.

Sprung

The equinox happened at 0901 GMT (2:01AM local) today, meaning it's now officially spring.

Thanks to former Indiana governor Mitch Daniels both adopting Daylight Savings Time and moving most of the state to the Eastern Time Zone in 2005 we're moving into the time of year when lack of sunshine is not a problem, since by high summer the sun won't be setting until quarter past nine. In fact on the summer solstice in Indy, Nautical Twilight lasts until 10:30.

The crocuses are popping up all over.

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