DST always screws with me. I think a big part of it involves growing up in a state that did not observe it. I grew up in Indiana in a time with no seat belt laws, no helmet laws, no open container laws, and no car emissions or inspection laws. And of course, the lack of observation of daylight savings time was also on the list. Whenever any of these laws were discussed, people would grumble about constitutional rights and how changing your clock wasn’t in the bible or whatever. And while it was convenient never having to change your clocks, it meant that any time you had a conversation with anyone out of state, it always began with “so what time is it there? Are you guys eastern or central or what?” And after I moved to Seattle, every single phone call I got from a parent began with the “so what time is it there?” conversation.
Once I moved out of non-DST land, the thing that always messed with me is I almost always seemed to be on the road when the time change happened. I don’t remember the exact numbers, but I think in my first ten time shifts, I was on the road for like 8 or 9 of them. I even remember when I moved across the country in 99, the time changed during the middle of my trip, and I lost an hour in Texas and it completely screwed with me. I was in Boston for my first time shift in Seattle; then here in San Francisco for the second one, and back in Indiana for the third. I’d have to dig up old trip records to find more, but I remember always getting screwed up when I would return.
Now the thing that screws with me is that they changed the dates. I blame George Bush for this, even if I don’t blame him for much, and maybe I should. I mean, Iraq is bad, but trying to figure out how to reset the time on my microwave oven isn’t easy either. And another problem is the fact that half of the clocks and timekeeping devices in this house automagically change times, and half don’t. Yesterday morning, my watch did not change, but my computer did. And I have this new atomic timekeeping alarm clock (which I coincidentally bought when I was in Indiana over the holidays last year) and it magically changed. But I was screwed up because I would look at the computer and it said 10:48 and then I went to take a shower and looked at my watch and thought “damn, it’s only going on 10:00 now – I must have looked at the time wrong.” And then I realized the time changed.
And yeah, I never read the news, or watch the TV news, and I know to some people that makes me a horrible person or whatever. But I have my own conspiracy theories about why it’s a waste of time to keep up with the news. Albert Einstein didn’t spend four hours a day watching CNN and listening to Air America, and he led a somewhat productive life, right?