I’m a total baby about turning the clocks forward. I hate it. I’m angry all day. I’m angry at every clock I see and have to change. I’m sulking right now, in fact, because I got up early and so I can get a lot done today except oh wait I can’t because it’s an hour later for no rational reason. Stupid Spring-Forward clock change jerk day.
Babies have an instinctual sense that that clocks have been moved forward. Grown ups who are acting like babies have a more conscious sense.
It’s an incredibly childish reaction, I recognize. It’s just that these are my hours, and I want all of them, so all day I’m feeling this ‘phantom hour’ so to speak.
And, yes, I’m giddy all day in the fall when there’s an extra hour, but that was a long time ago.
I know a lot of people really like it being light later, and I do too in theory. The thing, though, is that I have to be at work at 7:00am, and so it actually gets harder and harder to go to bed at a reasonable time when the sun is shining and kids are playing hopscotch in the streets and Frisbees keep knocking against the house and birds are singing incessantly and barbecues are everywhere and, okay, most of this stuff isn’t really happening but it sure feels like it is when you’re trying to go to bed and it’s not completely dark yet.
Which is why I’ve decided that this is the government’s fault. I earned these hours, and who is the government to come and “borrow” them for 7 months? And where’s the accountability? The check and balances? The government’s taking all these hours without any oversight at all!
Which brings us, then, to this week’s Weekly Question of the Week: What is the government doing with all these hours they’ve taken?
Remember to submit your answer, and also to vote on the finalists for last week’s question!
March 11, 2012 at 7:29 am
Amen. As an added bonus, I had insomnia last night, so when I trudged to the couch to fuss, I was beyond confused: was the time on my cell phone (1:30) correct, or the time on the cable box (3:30) or the time on the DVR player (2:30)? I neurotically obsess about how much sleep I’ll get if I can JUST FALL ASLEEP NOW. Try running those calculations for three scenarios. I’m still not sure what time it is or how much sleep I got. The only thing I know? I hate springing ahead.
March 11, 2012 at 8:32 am
How many times have I uttered the phrase “If I fall asleep RIGHT NOW I can still get __ hours of sleep” in my life…
March 11, 2012 at 7:36 am
I will feel sorry for you as I will be dancing in the street, waving my arms in the air and being filled with the inexpressible joy at having an extra hour of daylight. Oh, and little birds will be chirping overhead and unicorns will be trotting by and all the flowers will be in bloom and all the Republican presidential wannabees will disappear.
March 11, 2012 at 8:32 am
Oh, the unicorns! I forgot about all the damn unicorns!
March 11, 2012 at 7:41 am
I just woke up and I am already exhausted…
The government is hoarding the extra hours in case the apocalypse really does arrive on December 20. 2012 so they can inaugurate a brand new screwed up world…
March 11, 2012 at 8:31 am
That would be surprisingly foresightful of them!
March 11, 2012 at 8:34 am
Hahaha!
March 11, 2012 at 7:45 am
I’ve alway wondered why people get so worked up about this. Hm. That’s all I can think to comment, I just don’t get it. Is it because so many are night people? What hour did you lose? Why don’t they make the time change at noon instead of affecting people’s sleep? Oh. I get it. But it’s a one day annoyance right? Because then all the clocks match.
March 11, 2012 at 8:31 am
Oh, I manage to work out a good 2-3 days of annoyance. It’s not easy, but I try to stay focused. It helps to occasionally say something to yourself, like “Let’s see, I want to go running, and I need to go to the store and pay bills. It’s 2:30, so I don’t have time for all that except that I should because it’s really 1:30!”
March 12, 2012 at 3:01 am
THAT I totally understand.
March 11, 2012 at 7:47 am
Since it is now the Obama Administration, I’m quite sure they’re using all these hours to turn all the furniture in the direction of Mecca.
March 11, 2012 at 8:29 am
Clearly. I’m sure the “death panels” factor in there somehow, too.
March 11, 2012 at 10:46 am
Absolutely. They’re thinking up how to kill people while facing Mecca. While looking for the birth certificate. (I hope it’s obvious that these are all tongue-in-cheek …)
March 11, 2012 at 8:01 am
Duh, everybody knows they are bowling on the green with their extra hours.
March 11, 2012 at 8:24 am
Laughing at all us suckers the whole time…
March 11, 2012 at 10:00 am
I actually like the longer days, but I also want to know what the Fed is doing with my time… think they keep it all out in Area 51?
March 11, 2012 at 3:44 pm
That’s how they keep the aliens alive! They eat time!
March 11, 2012 at 11:28 am
Stupid Spring-Forward clock change jerk day.
That is the best line ever.
Now admit it, B-man. You’re the one outside skipping around throwing frisbees until dark. You’re just mad because it’s cutting into your blogging time.
And it’s obvious what the govt. is doing with all these extra hours. They’re giving them to the Republicans so they can extend this excrutiatingly painful nomination thing until the Four Horsemen arrive and put us all out of our misery.
March 11, 2012 at 3:43 pm
Everything cuts in to blogging time. Work. Family. Exercise. Community. Pff.
March 11, 2012 at 12:30 pm
They save the hours and use them to give members of Congress extra time to sleep and meet with mistresses,er, I mean advisors. They sometime allot the to government contractors to create invisible toilet seats and $1K wrenches.
March 11, 2012 at 3:41 pm
I can see a down side to invisibly toilet seats. A horrible, horrible down side.
March 11, 2012 at 1:32 pm
I think they’re putting all the hours in a time bank so they can trot them out for obscure statistics like “Americans spent 6.1 billion hours complying with tax codes” or “Americans spent 8.8 billion hours filling out federal paperwork in 2010.” Or they’re giving them to Justin Timberlake to extend his life in that movie he did. Which, ironically, was an hour and 49 minutes its viewers will never get back.
And since for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction… that extra hour of daylight in the evening translates to an extra hour of darkness in the morning. No fun for early risers!
March 11, 2012 at 3:34 pm
I know – we were just getting to the point where the dogs aren’t getting walked in complete darkness in the morning…
March 11, 2012 at 3:25 pm
Why can’t they just cut the difference, set us back a half hour and never change again?
March 11, 2012 at 3:32 pm
Now that is my kind of logical thinking.
March 11, 2012 at 6:56 pm
I love having the extra light in the evenings, and really dont care how dark winter is because winter is stupid ….. so every spring, I have the same fantasy: THIS will be the year they decide to knock this sh#t off…..
But the idea above of cutting the difference in half is brilliant…..who do we forward that to, Father Time or that creepy baby in the diaper?
March 12, 2012 at 5:26 am
Preferably Father Time. That way he can show and give you a 30-minute warning that your time is up. Wouldn’t that be nice? “Got any ‘I love you’s’ to say, now’s the time.'”
March 12, 2012 at 5:38 am
I’m sure there will be an app for that someday!
March 11, 2012 at 7:41 pm
My husband went on a rant about it last night, too. “WHY can’t we live in Hawaii or Arizona or one of those other awesome places that realizes what bullsh*t Daylight Savings Time is?!” I asked him if he was really interested in living in any of those places, and he of course said no.
Seriously, though. Where are all those extra hours going? I know GWB was in on something suspicious because he’s the one that decided to make us go through it a month early. That bastard.
March 12, 2012 at 5:20 am
If W was behind it, then Cheney was behind it, which means Halliburton was behind it.
March 12, 2012 at 2:28 am
he looks so sweet
March 12, 2012 at 3:49 am
They -the government- should get rid of it all together. I see no purpose it serves other than making us change clocks once a year. I still don’t think I have changed all of them.
March 12, 2012 at 5:18 am
It’s unclear any more what the actual purpose is. Farming? Kids walking home in daylight? Who can say.
March 12, 2012 at 6:36 am
Okay, those job interview questions are PRICELESS! I want to vote for all of them.
I recall us agreeing to disagree on the merits of losing an hour back in the fall, LOL, although I know it’s rough when you have to get to work so early! But I love metaphoric barbeques and kids playing hopscotch at 8pm. Maybe the government is using those extra hours to make more Frisbees.
March 12, 2012 at 12:35 pm
I think you can vote once a day. Vote early, vote often!
March 12, 2012 at 9:33 am
i have also written about such a thing today…shocking, i know!
March 12, 2012 at 12:34 pm
Plagiarism! Anyone on the Internet talking about changing the clocks owes me $10!
March 12, 2012 at 12:47 pm
lol.
March 12, 2012 at 11:22 am
I also hate losing this hour in the spring! But I save my grumpy for the first day of work after the weekend when the clocks change, then I can complain to my co-workers all day about how unhappy I am with the time change. And how I had to drive to work in the dark again! Just when I was getting used to not turning on my headlights in the morning.
From what I understand this was originally started as a way for people to save money on electricity costs by being home during daylight hours more, but I think it’s a bunch of hewey (hooey?)!
March 12, 2012 at 12:33 pm
I do, in a dark way, look forward to the Monday morning gripe about it.
March 12, 2012 at 1:20 pm
I’m sure they will think of some way to sell it back to us…at a higher interest rate. Kind of like a time foreclosure.
March 12, 2012 at 4:20 pm
I now live in a place where no hours are lost or gained…evah! Literally that is…metaphorically speaking is another story. Still, twice every year, I must re-learn the proper hours for my global network of friends and relatives whose hours do change. Every year I swear I will memorize the simple formula involved and be accurate with my timing estimates when I make calls. And every year I get confused just the same, even though now I have the iPhone helping me. When I lived in NY (most of my life) I never understood the whole daylight savings thing. It created useless hours of dark or light…never useful ones. Anyway…loved the interview questions! 🙂
March 12, 2012 at 7:27 pm
We’re really just lending the hour to the government until the fall, when we get it back with no interest. 🙂
March 13, 2012 at 3:48 am
One more hour for the government to flush money down the defense department’s toilet.
March 14, 2012 at 1:30 pm
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March 14, 2012 at 3:02 pm
Hey, lookee that! Yay me! Thanks for pointing that out to me. I need to change my little description, though. As much as I’d like to think so, I have to accept that I’m just not “ornery.”
March 14, 2012 at 3:13 pm
Seriously! I thought they sent out a notification! You have been up for about a month. When I realized others hadn’t found out, I thought I should let you know just in case, Congrats! It’s huge since the only way anyone can look at your blog is by subscribing!
BTW – You are hardly “ornery!” Hahaha!
March 14, 2012 at 2:01 pm
Magically turning the hours into more money for them, of course!
March 14, 2012 at 3:04 pm
Safe to assume. Probably also safe to assume it’s being done really inefficiently.
March 15, 2012 at 5:24 pm
Vote for me for Best Answer to the Question of the Week. Also, thanks for reading the Byronic Man’s blog.
http://www.glasshalffool.com (ghfool)
March 16, 2012 at 11:30 am
I think you will find that THIS Governmnet’s record on using “harvested” hours is far superior to that of the previous incumbents.
Unfortunately FAR too many of these hours have been given away to minority groups and freeloaders.
My Grandfather – if he EVER got out of the asylum – would have had them all shot AND claimed back the cost of ammunition against tax.
March 16, 2012 at 12:08 pm
Have you noticed that you never get given a receipt either? (by the way don’t try writing off for one ….I’m currently at 100+ letters and counting)
If you spearheaded a campaign I’d gladly join…
“Our Hours r Ours”
pr something like that…
March 16, 2012 at 1:38 pm
I’d love to hear a crowd trying to chant: “What do we want?!” “What’s ours!” “And what’s ours?!” “Our hours! Our hours! Our hours are ours!”
March 16, 2012 at 7:18 pm
Nice post. I feel the same way. However, being a tax procrastinator, I’ll gladly sacrifice that hour if somene can tell me what the government is going with my extra money that I keep giving them each year. I know I’m sucking the fun here…sorry. I really do like your post, haha.
March 17, 2012 at 8:17 am
I’m sure your tax dollars are going somewhere important, like the task force in charge of catching people who melt pennies (which is a crime).
March 17, 2012 at 5:15 am
Daylight saving is a conspiracy to destroy people in long distance relationships who have to work out the time difference from country to country to schedule a skype date. Or…
The governments responsible are trying to mess with space-time so that all of the socks that have been sucked through the black hole of a dryer on laundry day can be returned to their owners. Peace and harmony will prevail when that time comes! Warmer feet for a happier nation!
March 17, 2012 at 8:05 am
You know, you may be on to something with the Skype thing. “Oh, did I wake you up again? Uh, sorry.” “No. It’s fine.” *scowl*