Time is on my side, for the moment

I'm really looking forward to getting my hour back tonight. The one the government took away last spring. I'd really like to know what they've been doing with it, but I don't think they have any procedures in place to account for their actions.

They certainly don't send out little pie charts that tell you where your time goes when they have it. They'd probably just lie about it, if they did. That's how they are.

I'm trying to decide what I'm going to do with it, though, when I get my hour back. The possibilities, as usual, are endless. I mean, whatever you're doing at two in the morning, you get to do for an extra hour, if you want. How cool is that?

I'll probably be asleep, if you wanna know the truth, but my law-enforcement buddy last night assured me that I could get in an extra hour of drinking, if I happened to be at the bar. As in, bars here close at 2 a.m., right? But at 2 a.m. the clock goes back to 1 a.m., so we get to keep drinking for another hour. He had to explain it a couple of times before I got it right, but I guess it makes sense. I was kind of mixed up, thinking it was Sunday that we moved the clocks, and that the bar would be closed Sunday anyway, so what did it matter. And yeah, it is Sunday, technically, when we move the clocks, but it's the part of Sunday that is still Saturday night.

We don't lose an hour of drinking when the clock moves ahead in the spring, though, on account of it doesn't spring ahead until the bar is already closed.

It seems like I'd have noticed this before now, but I guess it's possible that I've never been in a bar at closing time when the clocks get set back before. Or if I have, I forgot. Or I wasn't paying attention.

But it's the kind of thing I would pay attention to. I don't know why I find the time change so upsetting, but I do. Every year, I get all freaked about it. Twice. I'm normally not very punctual, but pulling the rug out from under me like this really messes me up. I have moved clocks in the wrong direction; I have moved them in the right direction before bed, forgotten it was already done, and then moved them again in the morning. I have moved some of the clocks in my house, but overlooked my alarm clock. Or my watch. And then there's a week or two every time change during which I don't believe any of the clocks I see. Or I'll see someone else's clock that they didn't change and it won't match with the time I have, and I'll figure they're more likely to have the right time, so I switch mine to match theirs.

You see how it gets.

But there's actually quite a fascinating history behind daylight saving time. The idea is to somehow adjust for the fact that, as you get further from the equator, the amount of daylight you get is different in the summer than in the winter. The various advocates for daylight saving time have offered different rationales in support of it over the years, but basically they range from increasing the time available for golfing and other activities that need daylight, to reducing the need for coal, to increasing traffic safety during peak travel times. Or something.

And the reason that daylight saving time is extended this year has to do with energy saving. The change was mandated in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and the actual effects will be analyzed before they decide whether to keep doing it this way or go back to the way we used to do it.

How freaky is this, though? What they did in latitudes further from the equator, back when they told time with sundials, is just give you less time for everything in the winter. Except sleeping, I guess. Because no matter when you have sunrise and sunset, the sundial is still divided into 12 hours. So each hour got shorter and shorter until the winter solstice, then longer and longer until the summer solstice. In the northern hemisphere, I mean. Sundials travel backwards in the southern hemisphere, or something. But the only time an hour was actually an hour long -- no matter what hemisphere you were in -- would have been, of course, the spring and fall equinoxes. Unless you were on or near the equator, when they would all be the same all the time.

I can't think about this too hard.