Daylight Saving Time starts earlier and ends later this year

I've never been a fan of losing an hour of my day on the first Sunday in April. Daylight Saving Time (NOT Daylight SavingS Time) is a nuissance and entirely unnecessary. Dealing with it for a half a year was bad enough, but now our "extra" hour of daylight will last even longer. This year Daylight Saving Time will start on March 11 and we won't get our hour back until November4. This change has prompted me to share my grievences about the time change with the world. Or at least my blog readers.

First we'll start with a little history. Just a little, I promise.

Around the time of World War I, the US and some European countries started using DST to conserve energy. The thought was that having an extra hour of daylight at night would mean one less hour of using energy to light homes and businesses. My first thought upon hearing this was that it didn't make sense because we don't just gain an hour of daylight at night, we steal it from our morning daylight. But then I realized that we'd be more likely to light our homes at night than we would while we're sleeping before sunrise. So they got me there.

But wait. Maybe that doesn't work today. After doing some reading, I realized that people are also more likely to use their air conditioners in that extra hour of daylight in the summer, which is when we experience Daylight Saving Time. Also, people are more likely to drive in the daylight, burning precious gasoline. Reports show that 1% or less of the nation's energy is conserved during the Daylight Saving Time. Maybe finding alternative energy sources is a better way to conserve fossil fuels than robbing Americans of an hour in March.

There are other reasons that Daylight Saving Time and I are not friends. It really does throw off my sleep pattern. As crazy as my sleep cycle is anyway, losing that hour makes it even weirder, and it takes weeks for me to get over the change. Most people complain about the loss of an hour of sleep for at least a few days. Think about what it must be like for someone with an actual sleep disorder. I imagine it would take months to adjust.

Farmers agree. They say it takes the roosters weeks to adjust to the time change. They (the roosters, not the farmers) crow at the same time, whether the clock says it's an hour earlier or not. Farmers, and other people whose work hours are based around daylight, are forced to start work an hour later, which often means they lose an hour of leisure time at night beause they are still working.

The whole thing doesn't make sense to me. We have to go around to all of our clocks and change them, adjust our sleeping pattern and lose an hour of our day, because it saves less than 1% of our energy consumption. And now it's taking over the year by starting earlier and ending later. The monster must be stopped!

Anyway, here are some summertime activities that are harmed by DST:

• Drive-in movies
• Fireworks
• Waking up in daylight
• Catching fireflies
• Looking at the stars
• Staying cool outside on a summer night
• Skinny dipping (it's easier in the dark)
• And Sundial reading
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