Posts Tagged ‘changing clocks’
Here Today
In moments of wondering about the ways of the world, my mind seamlessly bounces from comparing to the past and trying to imagine a future. I suppose my current need to select a version of Medicare insurance that suits me is contributing to my pondering how long I might live and what serious illnesses might force me into expensive services from doctors, clinics, medical labs, or hospitals.
It’s a crap shoot and I am not all that concerned about simply rolling some dice and maybe flipping a few coins for guidance.
More immediately, I’m aware that mass consumption of the Minnesota State High School Hockey Tournament games on television this weekend has me remembering what high school was like for me and how it compares and contrasts with the experiences of the kids in the stands and on the ice this year.
Plus, long-time play-by-play color commentator, Lou Nanne has announced this is his last tourney because he is retiring after 60 years in the booth, so the broadcasts are filled with flashbacks honoring him. It’s like looking at a scrapbook of how the world looked throughout my life. I remember that!
Campaigns for the 2024 U.S. Presidential election are cranked up and that has me wondering (and a little bit worried) about this country’s future. Top that off with the increasingly treacherous climate warming and my greater concern becomes the future of the entire planet.
I’ve contacted a local landscape company asking for a quote to address the settling of the earth around the foundation of our house. This is one of the recommendations that arose from the inspection visit by the neighbor I called last month. Taking care of that will remove at least one of the variety of possible contributing factors leading to the wet basement we experienced after it rained last December.
Seems like we’ve eliminated all the other causes we initially suspected. Updating the landscape around the house will not only be good for moving water away, but it should also make the place look sharper. If you can improve both function and appearance, it’s a win-win!
Who am I kidding? I know what really has my brain all muddled today. My least favorite weekend of the year is the one when the powers that be force the seasonal changing of our clocks and tonight we adjust one hour forward to Daylight Saving Time. That’s one less hour of sleep for humankind, one giant leap for our natural body clocks.
Cyndie and I have decided on this occasion, we will alter the time we reference for feeding the horses and Asher so that their internal clocks won’t experience any change. We have the luxury of adjusting our times because we are retired and don’t need to align our activities with jobs out of the home.
The times today or tomorrow are no different for animals. I wish I could say the same for me.
One Hour
I don’t recall whether I have officially gone on record with my thorough disliking of the practice of changing the clock one hour twice a year. Regardless whichever lame and outdated excuse is used to justify the idea, I am not the least bit convinced it has merit.
Maybe it’s the ridiculous name. There is absolutely no daylight saved by humans readjusting their clocks used to measure the hours. And I don’t like to admit how picky I can be, but the all too common habit of pluralizing the word “Saving” in the title has become like fingers on a blackboard to my ears ever since I learned about it and stopped doing so myself.
It’s only one hour, but it messes with my body clock and my feeble mind for days after the change. I should probably be more curious about why that would be, the science of it, but for some reason it doesn’t seem to interest me. I just know it does and I don’t care for it.
Leave the hours alone. Let the planet spin while it orbits the sun and keep the clocks adjusted to one reference. I don’t care whether it’s Standard or “Saving.” Just leave it the same all year round.
Please.
There. It’s on record.
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Already Late
My least favorite day of the year is the day our society moves the clocks ahead one hour. That first day, this first day, I wake up already late for the day.
Time travels too fast for me on a regular basis. It becomes uncomfortably amplified when the clock is adjusted to steal an entire precious hour for which I can do nothing to account.
Yesterday I read that there is a myth that the adjusting of our clocks is something that helps farmers, but that the myth is not true and the majority of farmers actually dislike Daylight Saving Time. It is supposed to have something to do with saving energy, since Germany first did it for that purpose during World War I.
It appears it doesn’t actually save energy. The other thing it doesn’t do is save daylight.
It annoys me that real proponents are the retail industry, which profits when more people go out (drive vehicles and use gas) to do things (spend money for barbecues and recreation) in the evenings during the longer day-lit evenings.
The most ridiculous reason I read was that it moved daylight from the morning when people are asleep, to the evening when they are awake.
Just get up when the sun comes over the horizon if you have a problem with it! Who cares what time that is?
Our horses have the luxury of completely ignoring what time we set our clocks to. They do what they do, whenever they see fit to do it.
Yesterday, Hunter wanted to sleep deeply in the middle of the day. Once again, my first reaction is alarm. It is always shocking to discover the horses so entirely unconscious.
It was an uncharacteristically warm and sunny March day. The air was calm and the other horses were up by the barn, grazing on hay when we approached with Delilah. Not wanting to startle Hunter, we paused to take in the serene scene. Delilah laid down by the wood fence of the paddock and looked on.
Horses don’t stay down like that for long, so we waited to witness a behavior that would show us he was fine. The very first thing I did was zoom in my attention on evidence he was indeed breathing.
Not long after I started taking pictures, or maybe, because I started taking pictures, Hunter picked up his head and looked around at the world. Yep, still daylight out.
Moments later, he went right back down where he came from. I figured he probably wanted to finish a dream that had been interrupted.
He wasn’t late for anything.
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Relative Something 