I realized this afternoon, as six o’clock bore down on me and I had not yet begun supper and knew I would soon have to get Baxter for our Collision rehearsal, that it did not feel so late as it was. It struck me almost immediately that we changed the clocks over the weekend–last week at this time it was an hour earlier, or was it an hour later, I can never get that straight in my mind. Thus I felt as if I should have more time before the rehearsal.

I have long thought that this idea of Daylight Savings Time was pretty stupid. Even the name makes little sense–if we are saving daylight, when will we use it? The government wanted everyone to get up and go to work an hour later during the winter, so that they would stay up later and use what little daylight we had to maximum advantage, so instead of asking everyone to change their schedules, they just changed the official clock. This meant that twice a year everyone was off schedule, because even if we remembered to fix our clocks we still had to adjust our biological clocks to match. Then gradually our technology caught up. Computers were the first devices to adjust for Daylight Savings Time automatically, followed by some wrist watches, video recorders, and now even clocks. Unfortunately, now that we have all this equipment that does this automatically, the government has changed the days on which the changes are to be made. This means the clocks are now wrong four times a year instead of two: in the Spring we have to adjust them ahead before the date they would adjust themselves, and then when they adjust themselves ahead automatically we must put them back, and then in the fall they will adjust them selves automatically and we will have to put them back, only to change them again when the new date comes. Tell me that this is not a stupid idea.

Rehearsal went well. Brittany was not here this week, because her mother is going in for surgery and life is a bit chaotic there at the moment. Baxter and Adam and I focused on the instrumentals, and made solid progress on some of the more difficult sections. I also gave Baxter a CD copy of the repertoire for himself and one for drummer Kevin, whom he expects to see on Sunday.

Otherwise, I am behind schedule, and looking ahead at a lot of delays. Let’s see what we can accomplish today with the time that remains. At least my body isn’t telling me to go to bed so early.

–M. J. Young