WonderCon is next weekend so the next few days will probably be filled with me rushing to clear the time and prep, occasionally pausing to foolishly wonder if there's any way I can get the event postponed a week or two. I know folks who average two or three conventions a month and I don't understand how they do it…or in some cases, why.
I have much to get done and it didn't help any that I lost that hour last night. In reality, it makes no difference but I now feel like my life is an hour behind and that's disconcerting.
Years ago, I was in Laughlin, Nevada when it came time to change the clocks. Laughlin is on the border there with Arizona, which is a confusion to begin with. Nevada is in the Pacific time zone and Arizona is in the Mountain time zone. So I found myself sitting in a restaurant in Laughlin that overlooked the Colorado River…and on the other side of the river, I could see the time on a huge digital display and it was an hour later than where I was.
I couldn't just ignore the time over there because the airport I'd be flying out of was over there — in Bullhead City, Arizona. From my hotel, it was close enough to walk to the airfield but I had to remember I'd lose an hour as I did. The nice part of that of course is that if your plane lands at 10:50 AM, you might think, "Oh, I'll be too late for the breakfast buffet at the hotel. It closes at 11!" And then by the time you get to your hotel, it's 10:05 and you still have time for waffles.
That can be baffling enough but Arizona does not, as a state, practice Daylight Saving Time. There are periods when it's in sync with the state to its west and periods when it is not. Right this moment, it's 11:30-whatever in both California and Arizona but twenty-hour hours ago, it was an hour earlier in my state. I'm sure to some it feels like Arizona is wrong and everywhere else, they're right. But actually Arizona is the place that has 24 hours in every day and doesn't move one of those hours six months later. (I'm told there are border cities in Arizona that do so much business with people crossing the state line that they roll their clocks back and forth in recognition of that. This is done just to confuse things further.)
I kinda like the extra hour of daylight…now. I have dozens of things in this house that run on timers and it used to be that I'd lose an hour just resetting them all. I once had six VCRs here, every one of which had its Time Set controls in a different place. Just remembering how to add or subtract an hour from each one was daunting. These days, fortunately, most of them adjust on their own but I do have to go around and check and then fix the ones that don't.
This morning when I awoke, the clock by my bed said it was 9:15. I couldn't recall if that clock recognized the change so I told myself, "It's either 9:15 or 10:15," and in a groggy, half-asleep fog told myself, "If it's 9:15, I probably need to go back to bed for another hour." It turned out it was 9:15 and that clock has a little switch on the back that you flip to add an extra hour or remove it. It doesn't adjust itself because, I guess, the manufacturer wants to be able to sell these in Arizona.