The word that best describes my election attitude: Indifferent. News embargo continues. Will I plug back in four years from now? IDK.

Wildfires rage. It's horrible.

Back to Standard time a couple weeks ago. YAY!

I was feeling sort of unmotivated and "blue" yesterday (Thursday is my long teaching day). I didn't have a good attitude and negatively assumed my afternoon class would not be prepared (a team of four was presenting). What actually happened...they were amazing and did a really good job! 😊

Spring forward tomorrow. I hate it! 😟

Why can't we stay on Standard time year round?

I'm trying to solve a blackboard-to-brightspace dilemma (converting my tools for peer and team assessment, something I've known was a problem for over a year) and a student dilemma (that I can't share, but I am feeling pissed). I'm also trying to (at least) match the number of posts I had last year, which is why I'm writing here more. End of semester looms. We fell back! Yay. I know the company line is to whine about standard time -- but not me. I feel normal again.

I'm still reading the book about ADC, and naturally doing much thinking along these lines. I teach a lot of philosophical ideas in my classes, so debates surrounding materialism/realism v. idealism/spiritualism are right up my alley. I also like studying the subject of time: our modern conception of unidirectional progress over time v. cyclical v. chaos. Months ago I re-read (or actually listened to, since I could find an audiobook but not an ebook, and I am not reading paper) The Third Wave and enjoyed his mention of time during the Second Wave.

I'm working on a grant and loving it!

Spring ahead last night -- I hate that!

I've had a drop in the number of posts here over the past two years, but very recently, I've felt like writing a flurry. Not sure whether it will continue. But today's post is about Massachusetts considering year-round Daylight Savings Time, but not wanting to do it alone.

“Massachusetts should only consider moving to what in essence is year-round Daylight Saving Time if a majority of other northeast states, also possibly including New York, also do so,” Commission chairwoman Sen. Eileen Donoghue said.

NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I want my hour back & I don't want it to be dark at 7 AM. Can't wait to be back on EST - REAL TIME. I am still pissed that DST is starting earlier (in March) and ending later (in November).  DST is torture. I guess I am OK with it in June, July, August -- but hate it in October and March. If a switch to consistent time is considered, it should be to real time -- EST -- NOT DST.

I searched this blog, and see that I have written about my dislike of DST many times before, especially regarding Springing Ahead. So I made a new label. If this idea is considered in NYS, my opposition will make Save Our Stewart's look like apathy.

This village snow family is near the river! So cute. They won't last very long though as today feels like a spring day. Such is March -- major snowstorm to balmy sun in 24 hours.

The annual outrage occurs tonight (actually early tomorrow): springing ahead. I hate the early change to Daylight Savings Time. Am I a broken record? I know I write about it every year, and again in the fall when we switch back to real time far later than in the past. Curse you, Congress -- this is one thing you managed to successfully pass? $#&*(+!@%^)=

Just got back from campus center. It felt to me almost as if was my first day on campus for the fall semester -- the temperature, the way students were dressed, and my reaction to the cacophony and crowds. There was a table set up with giveaways of sandwich wraps, tee shirts, basketball key chains. What looked to be a mini-roulette wheel was being used to determine winners, and a large group of students was gathered around. One week of break and already my self-diagnosed agoraphobia has reared up? Another issue, I am tired. I should be well rested from my lovely time away from the grind, but habitual late nights and being able to rise (& shine) when it suits me takes a toll. 7 a.m. is not my preferred hour for rising and certainly not for shining -- especially given the !@#$%^&* too-early switch to !@#$%^&* daylight savings time (in rebellion I considered keeping my wrist watch on standard time), so by mid-day I find myself looking forward to the day being over. But I shouldn't wish my life away, and so instead I'll dream about a nap. Unfortunately, a cup of coffee will have to do!

Turning over an academic writing opportunity. Conflicted about whether to do it.

Wow - it feels like snow!

Which reminds me, Elwyn wrote in his diary that the return to "real time" took place on September 30 in 1951. I looked it up and we are not falling behind until November 6! I remember not that long ago it was much earlier in the fall; you don't have to go back 60 years. I don't care if it is dark at 2 PM - I hate getting up in the dark. It feels like it is the middle of the night when the alarm goes off.

I thought the reason for this stupidity was so that kids don't have to wait for the school bus in the dark in the spring. That is what is always said when moving daylight savings time to earlier in the year is questioned. Hello! They are waiting for the school bus in the dark right now.

I want my hour back now!

On another subject, sort of related only because someone in government decreed it, the subject of the metric system came up recently when we were visiting a friend. We all remembered lengthy units every year in elementary school where we learned it. We were told that we were going to convert to it someday and that was why it was important. We were scolded that it was a better, more sensible system that the rest of the world used when we complained. The insinuation was that only provincial morons who were stuck in the past would resist.

Well, guess what? It was a failure and we never switched. All that instruction was a waste of time. What makes it worse is that we never learned anything about the supposedly inferior system we use every day - acres, miles, quarts and bushels were completely neglected. That information had to be taught to us by our parents. Today I know people who struggle with how many pints are in a quart.

Who couldn't have predicted that outcome? I feel it was culturally insensitive to teach us that crap and ignore the English system.

When are we going to fall behind and why did they make it so late for the past couple of years! I think I may be a minority opinion in this, and I can understand liking Daylight Savings Time during the summer, but at this point who cares if it is dark earlier in the evening? I can't stand getting up in the morning before it is light out, my system is completely out of whack. Owls unite and rebel! We want our hour back!

I know being 45 and childfree raises suspicion of being a kid hater, so I hesitate to write this! But this is one of those days when I am tempted to open a window and yell. A group of kids often rides downhill in the neighbor's yard after school when it is a nice day, and there is enough snow. The hill behind our houses is perfect for sleigh riding. Whatever dogs I have had, this results in nonstop watching out the window, while barking. Howie, Penny, Rudy, Sophie, Sam: two dogs barking at once, without missing a beat. It drives me insane. What compounds the irritation is that these kids don't even live in one of the houses on our hill. The neighbor does have a grandson, but it isn't him. These kids are much older. I know the kids are having fun; sledding was something I loved to do, also. But Daylight Savings Time means that there is another hour of daylight while there still is snow this year!

When I wrote the post before this one, I copied and pasted it from a word processor. I usually type right in the blogger interface, but lately - either because of the blogger upgrade or because of some other change I have made recently in my computer (and there have been many), when I write a long post, all too often the machine crashes or freezes and everything is lost. I suppose one thing I've learned (but haven't consistently done) from blogging during the past five years is that it's safer to copy/paste. However, the line breaks are irritating. I fixed some of them, but I probably won't bother to spend the time correcting them all, even if it looks crummy, and my detail-ish-ness is peeved over it.

I'm so irritated that daylight savings time has been extended this year. Why did they do this? Who benefits? Certainly not me. I am just going to let the time be wrong on my computers. It isn't worth trying to patch.

Still Sunday night to me! Another long day spent working on the Castleton kitchen, and there is still more to go! I painted the stairs white and grey. Bob continued wallpapering. I am tired. I don't mean sleepy exactly, or mentally drained, which are my usual forms of exhaustion. Instead this is a physical soreness. That can be a "good" kind of tired, because it is a novelty. So much time - too much time - is spent sitting at a desk, under an artificial light, staring at a CRT. I'll sleep well tonight.

That's in spite of daylight savings time, of course. It always takes me a while to adjust to the unnatural time. It's just wrong, wrong, wrong. Oh, I do like it being light out later at night in the warm weather, but I hate "springing ahead," and losing a good weekend hour - 2 a.m. to 3 a.m. no less! My body doesn't like waiting until October to get it back. One of these years I plan to start my own crusade, and I'll be like that state (which is it? Some place in the midwest I think) and stay on real time, just to be contrary. So there.

Well I'm not disappointed, the leaves are beautiful here in the Catskills, even on a rainy day! Soon we will fall behind - unlike most I do not mourn daylight savings time, but relish the extra hour we get back in the best part of the "evening." The early darkness is cozy, all snug in my house, and it makes summer more precious. (I was going to write "summer is overrated," but that isn't completely true.)

I believe I will take up the suggestion from my comments, and when I post the pictures here I will write about Halloween 1966 or '67. I don't remember which it was either, and I'm not sure what costume I wore, but I will never forget the events of that night (and I have a feeling my anonymous commenter remembers it even better than I do). In another strange coincidence, we were coming from my Aunt Dot's house that night. Tonight we had dinner at Aunt Dot's!