Tag Daylight

In The Dark

Michael Leave a comment

I was on the road around 7:30 in the evening the other day and I noticed something. It was almost dark. It hadn’t yet turned into Fall and it was already dark before prime time television began. You do realize what that means. Don’t you? Yes, another time change is coming.

When I saw that the cars around me had their headlights on and it was only 7:30, I flashed on what it would be like only six short weeks from now. We go through this every fall. On the last Saturday of October we will turn our clocks back an hour, gaining an hour of sleep that night but losing many, many hours of sanity as the trade-off. That’s because you can’t be sane when it gets dark before the six o’clock news comes on. Or in the deepest throes of winter, before the five o’clock news comes on! The only good thing about this year will be that I won’t be leaving for work in the morning and coming home in the evening, both ways in darkness. Little consolation that will be only because I won’t be working. Instead I’ll get to sit at home and see how short the day really is as those few daylight hours march on. And march on they will, quickly, and too few of them, until March when we get to reset our clocks to DST (Daylight Saving Time or as I prefer Daylight Sanity Time).

This blog is loaded with posts on time changes. Why we change our clocks, why we change them back, who doesn’t go through this ritual, and other thoughtful answers for inquisitive minds. There are so many I can’t list them here. If you’re interested, type in Daylight Saving Time into the search box on the home page and pick a couple to review. I’ll give you a synopsis here. I don’t like it. I don’t like reverting to Standard Time every fall.

After the last Saturday of October there’ll be nothing fun left to do but wait for Daylight Saving Time to return. Ok, there will be Christmas. And New Years. And Thanksgiving. And Groundhog Day. Mustn’t forget Groundhog Day. But otherwise, the fun will be done until spring springs ahead into Daylight Saving Time and we recapture the evening sun.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

It’s All Downhill From Here, Or Is It?

Michael Leave a comment

Summer came a few days ago.  On June 21 at 6:51am EDT, the sun was closest to the Northern Hemisphere that it will ever get during the year, or the Earth’s axis was tilted toward the sun at the most extreme angle that it will ever get during the year, or the day was the longest that it was going to be on any day during the year.

That’s a lot of ways to define the start of summer.  But then you also have those other people who claim the summer solstice isn’t the start of summer but the middle of summer and that just confuses things even more.  We just wait for the weather people to tell us when summer arrives each year and then we know when to start singing the blues.

What?  Who’s singing the blues?  And why?  Let’s take a look at this.  The start of summer is on the longest day of the year.  That means every day after that is getting shorter.  Not so much that you’d notice it.  But it’s happening.  Next thing you know, well, if the next thing you notice is 180-some days away, is that it is the shortest day of the year.  And that it’s cold outside.  We just spent five of the past six months avoiding the cold outside.  Finally around the end of May we started getting consistently warmer temperatures.

Those warmer days meant pools were opened, gardens were planted, grass was fertilized (not every summer chore is a fun one), grills were fired up, convertibles were taken out of storage, and shorts were worn – even by non-fat men.  Surely one day three-quarters of the way through June can’t mess up all those plans, even if it does mean that June 22 had just a smidge less daylight than June 21.

Say what you will but we’re planning on still spending a lot of the next 60 to 90 days on summer time fun.  Toward the end we might have to cram some of those activities into days with less daylight, going from 18 hours to twelve.  But anybody who ever ate a tomato fresh from the garden will tell you that it is all worth it.

When the days start getting less than 12 hours long then we’ll prepare for the upcoming assault by winter.  But the best part of that is that sometime, about three-quarters of the way through December, the days start getting longer again.

That means another summer is just around the corner.

Now, that’s what we think. Really. How ‘bout you?