I don't know about you, but I absolutely hate daylight savings time. I understand the need to get the most out of daylight hours...but its not exactly the 1800s anymore. These newfangly electric lights make it possible to be productive after the sun sets. All it does is screw up my sleeping patterns and force me to remember how to reset every clock in my house. Those with spring break off next week will be lucky and have some time to transition, but not me.Next Monday, I'll wake up and drag myself to work like the living dead. It will take about a week for me to get back into the groove. I know its just an hour, like traveling ahead to another timezone, no big deal, but it messes with me. Falling back I do okay with - getting an hour is great - but losing an hour... not so much. DB has worked 12 hour night shifts for the last 3.5 years and I have firsthand knowledge of what a mess body clock fiddling can make. I don't like it.
So I wanted to know who I could blame for this and I googled it. Apparently the idea was thought up by an entomologist named George Vernon Hudson. Although it was partly due to the fact that most people slept through a good part of the beautiful summer mornings in London, the truth of the matter is that he didn't like cutting his rounds of golf short at dusk. Typical. The whole world rearranges itself so men have more time for golf. It didn't catch on until WWI in the US, where the push to conserve energy and fuel was at its peak. Only one state in the US doesn't participate now - Arizona, where I grew up. Living there, the biggest challenge is remembering what time it is in other places that do change, so you don't call someone later or earlier than you anticipated.
Nothing I can do to change it, short of moving back to Arizona, so I have to live with it. The smart thing to do this week would be for me to get up ten minutes earlier each morning and go to bed ten minutes earlier each night until I was fully adjusted for the change. I don't see that happening.
What about you? How do you handle daylight saving's time? Love it? Hate it?
SP
17 comments:
I don't like springing ahead either. I know it's only an hour, but it does mess with me. Something about *knowing* I'm losing an hour of sleep...
I love fall back, though. I feel positively lazy getting that extra hour!
I don't like falling ahead, and I don't like springing forward. I wish we could just pick a time and stick with it year round. If it gets dark too early for you, START EARLIER! Sheesh.
But yes, springing forward is harder. :-/
I don't like it. Never have and it has little to do with the adjustment. It is supposed to be dark at night. I like things like they are supposed to be. I don't want to hunt behind cabinet doors for the refrigerator, firetrucks to be green, or for it to be light at nine o'clock at night.
Not that I have any rules or opinions.
Hate it, hate it, hate it. Especially with children. We keep to a bedtime routine/wakeup time around here, and there is nothing worse than trying to help them adjust.
When they were smaller and I wasn't having to work around homework, baths, and not enough time in the evenings, I would start moving their bedtimes incrementally for the 2 weeks beforehand. Now, I'm lucky if I remember that DST is, say, tomorrow. Yuck!
Wouldn't you know it would all be a man's fault. And I totally didn't realize that Arizona didn't move with everyone else! Cool.
Angel
I hate and despite DST. I suggest we get out the pitchforks and march on Montgomery, and force them to remove the state from those who observe one of the most witless, pointless exercises in stupidity the world has ever seen.
There is at least one county (in Indiana? Illinois? Maybe Kentucky) that didn't join the ridiculousness, either. Lucky them.
There's no justification for it. There's no logic to it. It doesn't save power, because if I have to get up in the dark, I'm going to have the lights on for the same amount of time I would if it got dark earlier. Doesn't help the farmers, either, because they go by sunrise and sunset, not by the clock. Golf? Yeah, I can see some egomaniac thinking his golf game is more important than the rest of the freaking world.
And now that I've expressed my opinion rather calmly, want to see me go off on a rant about it????
I still remember the year we took the boys to Disney World for spring break. It was the same weekend that DST began, so we lost 2 hours in one night. But we survived. And then there was the trip to Arizona and surrounding states when everyone else went on DST. So we changed time zones and Nevada went on DST but Arizona didn't. I was never quite sure what time it was that week. ::grin::
I guess I'm the lone dissenter. I like DST once I've recovered from springing forward. When I had a yard I enjoyed having the extra hour at night to work in the flowers when it was a little cooler. Of course, now I have no yard so maybe DST won't be so appealing to me.
During World War II the nation was on daylight saving time year around so we did not have the trauma of springing forward or falling back every year. I don't recall how many years this situation lasted, probably until 1945. Then time was left alone for many years until some nut decided to mess with Mother Nature again. It's not wise to mess with Mother Nature!
Being a night person, 8:00 PM sunsets are great. Additionally, I'm grumpy in the morning anyway, so I don't care if the sun is up or not.
This flip-flopping back and forth, though, drives me crazy.
Marie
Now, Linda, tell us how you really feel. :)
Angel
I'm with you. I love getting the extra hour in the Fall but hate losing it in the Spring. I have a feeling that we won't be making church or Sunday school this week. I just don't think I can handle that and DLT too.
Instigator
I'm ok with DST. It gives me a little extra time in the late afternoons to piddle in my garden and water all the flowers. I also run in the afternoons and now we won't have to do that in the dark.
Ask me again around about Wednesday or Thursday and I'm sure I won't be so chipper about it. :D
I don't like the time change myself! I have never adjusted since they change it in the fall! I wish they would just set it to the way it is in the spring and leave it! I like it when we have more daylight in the evenings. I hate it when its dark at five o'clock. Just spring us ahead and leave it alone! I guess I am a night person and don't like change.
Glad to see I'm not the only one! I've tried going to bed a little earlier and getting up earlier, but I just can't stomach the idea of getting up at dawn on Sunday so I can adjust Monday. Just wrong.
I am with the majority - hate it. At least I no longer have to get up early except usually once a week but it still messes with me!
I ALWAYS WONDERED "WHY" ALSO.
HERE IT IS EXPLAINED FOR US. ENJOY!
Daylight Saving Time
Search: History and Origins
Set your clocks ahead one hour before going to bed Saturday night. Spring's daylight saving time begins Sunday at 2 a.m.
We get an extra hour of daylight when we "spring forward" each March and then lose it when we "fall back" in November. But have you ever wondered how DST began? Here are some tidbits about its origins and pros and cons of these time-changing events. (Read this again -- we do gain daylight when we spring forward and then lose it when we fall back.)
A series of events led to our modern-day DST:
- Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers, suggested something akin to daylight saving time in a 1784 essay.
- A postal clerk from New Zealand was the first to propose modern DST.
- Congress first put America's clocks ahead one hour during World War I and (later for WWII). Why?
- Congress enacted the Uniform Time Act of 1966 to eliminate confusion about DST across the country.
- Thanks to this act, DST in the United States now begins on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November.
PS: I wasn't alive during WW I. ;-)
They did it during the war to conserve energy resources, much like they did with food and other rations. Coal and such was needed to support the military. I guess they figure if you're up when the suns up and asleep when its not, you won't use as many lights. Don't see that really flying anymore. I don't care what time it is or if its daylight. I do what I have to do.
I don't like getting up an hour earlier. I need my sleep, but I have alwasy thought the whole DST thing to be cool. Go figure.
I like it darker when I get up so that I can actually see the sun rise. I like it lighter during the afternoon so I can get more done outdoors, free of those pesky mosquitos that like to eat anyone alive during dusk. Plus, in the summer that means more pool time. Yay!
That said, I hate having to get my bearings for nearly one week after we switch in the spring. The mind knows what time it is, but the body doesn't. Arrrrr!
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