Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

So, again with this crazy Daylight Savings / Standard / Shmavings / Stupor whatchamacallit. Does it even serve a purpose anymore, other than to guarantee at least a few of us end up late to work / church / the airport / brunch / whatever?* And then to make us spend the next week and a half trying to readjust. Now that they’ve rescheduled the biannual rescheduling of the clocks, it’s even worse.

Wouldn’t you know it, Melanie and I were scheduled to speak in our church services this last Sunday. We had known we were going to speak for about two months. You’d think that would have you well prepared, but any good preparations fly out the window when you’re unaware of the time change. Our services start at 9:30 a.m. At approximately 8:30 a.m. by our clocks, Melanie and I were (fortunately) dressed and just sitting down to eat breakfast when the phone rang. It was a guy from our church, asking if we were planning on going to church that day. I jokingly said, “Do we have to?” I assumed he was just calling to confirm that we were still planning on speaking, kind of as a courtesy. He didn’t laugh at my joke, but I quickly informed him that we were going to be there without a problem. He then said, “Ok, well, we started about five minutes ago because of the time change.” My jaw dropped. I had no clue about the time change whatsoever. It’s not as if I had just forgotten about it that morning, or the previous night, or even a few nights before. I’d never known!

Melanie and I ripped our poor protesting child away from his breakfast and forced him into his car seat so we could speed our way to church. We got there before we even would have done our things, but it wasn’t a pleasant way to set the tone. Things went really well, but it makes Daylight Savings leave an even nastier taste in my mouth than it has done before.

Not that I’ll be complaining in October when I get an extra hour … or is it November? Sheesh!

*For the record, there are supposedly numerous advantages to the observance of Daylight Saving Time. See this Wikipedia article for more information. It may not make a convert of you (or me), but it should at least make your annoyance at Daylight Savings a more informed kind of annoyance.

3 comments:

  1. I'm so paranoid about this kind of stuff happening that I make sure to know exactly what day the change is going to happen and change all the clocks before I go to bed the night of the change. And yes, I have some weird tendencies.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Geez MacG, make the rest of us look bad :)

    I did know about the time change. I even mentioned to Jeff last week that we needed to remember it on the weekend. However, Sunday about 5 o'clock I was looking to see what was on t.v. We have that menu thing with the shows all listed. I noticed that it was showing the 6 o'clock shows. Why did it bring that up? I asked. Why won't it let me go back to 5 o'clock? There is also a clock on this menu. Why does it say 6? I kept looking at the VCR clock, the alarm clock and the t.v. menu clock. What's going on?
    Oh, yes, we were supposed to set the clocks ahead.
    We had had a very lazy weekend. VERY lazy. We didn't go to church or anywhere else. So, I didn't feel too cheated by losing the hour. But, since Jeff has to work at 11 Sunday night, I wanted to cry. WHO STOLE MY HOUR!?!?!?!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Khrys and Dad and I went to Elko for the wedding open house and Jacob's mission report. Think of being with Dad, crossing into a new time zone and then setting the clocks back on the day we go home. You can just imagine: "It's two o'clock now so we will actually lose two hours somewhere so on the way back when we cross the line if we don't change the time on our clocks we'll be one hour ahead and it will be sometime or other but in our time we'll be.........." Just imagine.

    ReplyDelete