a lost hour ...

It's the first Thursday in March and with my early morning cup of joe came the meteorologist's proclamation that this Saturday night we would move to Daylight Savings Time. Oh, joy. That means when I get up Sunday morning at 7:30 to go through the Sunday paper, it won't be 7:30, it will be 8:30. I'm usually done with my Sunday paper by then so I can take care of whatever it is I'm supposed to take care of after I read the Sunday paper. You see, Sunday is the only day of the week where I have the time to leisurely journey through the newspaper. I love the newspaper, but real life gets in the way of reading it on weekdays, so I resort to reading it on the internet during the week and eagerly anticipate the Sunday edition, at home wearing my pajamas and drinking my fresh-ground, home brewed coffee. I like the weight of the paper in the plastic bag when I pick it up from the driveway. I like the smell of the ink on paper when I remove it from the plastic bag. Once I have my coffee cup in hand, I switch on the lamp with its energy saving bulbs, don my red reading glasses and begin to disassemble the paper. The front page. The Local section. The business section and the art & culture section. The classifieds and the travel section. And, joy of joys! the weekly circulars from Target and K-Mart and other local stores comes under separate plastic wrap, just waiting for my purusal.

I put them in the order I like to read them and then I begin with Page One and don't stop (except to go to the bathroom!) until I'm done. The entire process usually takes about an hour. But this week, because I will lose an hour of my life to Daylight Savings Time, I suspect I will have to perform the abbreviated version of reading the Sunday paper.

I like the extra daylight at the end of the day that comes with Daylight Savings Time, but I don't really get to enjoy it for two or three weeks. You see, that's how long it takes my body to adjust. I wake up every morning two or three minutes before the alarm goes off. My internal clock works really well. But it won't be working for the next few weeks. I'll be thinking it's almost 5:30 AM and it will really be 6:30 AM and I will be late!