Falling back

I love daylight savings time.  In fact, I think we should be on daylight savings time all year round.  Then, of course, it wouldn't actually be daylight savings time, it would just be "picking up our country and moving it one step to the right on the global time zone map." (Take that Greenwich Mean Time!)

I hate, hate, hate losing an hour of sleep in the spring.  And all the parents I know with infants or young children can't stand "gaining an hour" in the fall because children don't know they are supposed to wake up an hour later on their circadian bio-clock.

But I was struck today that, due to the ubiquitous nature of clocks linked to "the grid," I've all but lost a time-honored tradition in Keenie-Beanieland.  You see, I am a godless heathen who doesn't go to church on Sunday - and indeed, rarely makes a date for that lovely, lazy day of the week.  Even though I am godless, I take that "day of rest" commandment thing pretty damn seriously.

So in the good old days, I would wake up and trundle through my lazy Sunday blissfully unaware of the time change until the evening, when I might turn on the television and notice that my favorite show wasn't going to be starting for another hour.

And friends, this is a priceless gift, because just as I was starting to wind down the weekend and bemoan the fact that I had to be at work the next morning, I was handed another whole precious weekend hour.  How cool is that?  I would go around the house resetting all the clocks an hour back and revel in the found time.

That is way better than getting an extra hour of sleep.  My unconscious self has no appreciation for the gift.

But now on "fall back day," I wake up and check the time on my automatically-synchronized atomic alarm clock - mildly pleased that I seem to feel a little less sleepy than I usually might at this hour of the morning. I turn on the DVR whose clock has been updated by its satellite tether, note the (naturally) accurate time on the morning news, check messages on the smartphone with a clock reset by those clever folks at T-mobile, and fire up the laptop that somehow knows what time it is before I even connect to the net.  As it happens, the only clock I need to reset is the watch that I rarely consult anyway and apparently wear primarily for decoration, and only on weekdays at that.  I usually figure out the watch is wrong sometime around the middle of Monday, which if anything, makes me feel like I have to spend an extra hour in the office.

So as far as I'm concerned, I haven't gained anything.  Where is my precious found hour?  Sometimes technology is too smart for its own good.