Lost an hour a sleep and half an hour fixing clocks

Is it alright if I find it a sign of moral weakness that we now institute Daylight Savings Time while there is still snow on the ground? Maybe we are working on a misguided impression that an extra hour of daylight will help melt the snow quicker. It just seems bizarre to me that we start this so early now. I remember as a kid that daylight savings time meant that you could be outside well into the evening but we didn’t need to be wearing mittens at the time.

(Yes, I occasionally wore mittens. When you’re already labeled a geek things like keeping your hands warm takes precedence over any attempts at style.)

I say this every year but I find it useful to reiterate it. The reason we have daylight savings time has nothing to do with energy conservation or schoolkids taking the bus in the dark or any of those reasons. It is simply so that we have an extra hour of light in the evening for barbecues, golf and other economically viable activities. You move the hour of sunlight wasted by sleep to when you are most likely to spend money. It’s tricks like this that keep the economy moving in its own lumbering way.

That said, the hour of lost sleep gave me an excuse to stay in last night as opposed to making a late night even later. In all honesty I was just dead tired last night and had to wake myself up to even be bothered to turn on the Duke-Carolina game. Probably could have just slept given the end result. Duke looks like a team that is going to lose in the Sweet Sixteen. They’ve got talent but they also lose to teams like Miami. Not a very good sign.

Switching gears, I have a bit of a bummer to report on. I got a call on Friday about the job I was interviewing for and was told that they wouldn’t be needing my services at this time. It wasn’t a complete door slam as they were passing my resume on to another manager who might be interested in me but still it wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear. Not sure exactly why I didn’t get the position (I asked the recruiter for reasons but wasn’t told anything specific) but I felt that I interviewed well. That said, I didn’t think that I would get a job this quickly or this easily so I’m not stunned by the result. I’m just bummed as I really felt qualified for the position and could have done a bang up job in it.

The good news is that I still really haven’t even started my job search. I’ve reached out to a few people and dropped a resume off here and there but I haven’t even come close to going full bore. I’m confident that I will find something out there for me. Given what I’ve accomplished I think I could make someone take a chance on me. Otherwise I’ll just enjoy my paid sabbatical. I’ve always wanted one of those.

Best of 120 Minutes: Thought that I’d have a rocking start to the week. Given that we are all going to have a collective case of jet lag in the morning there is nothing better than some musical adrenaline to start the day. Let’s all enjoy the Smashing Pumpkins, the best band ever out of Chicago, with the song that broke them into the mainstream. This will make a day of spreadsheets and powerpoints much more palatable.



The five random CDs for the week:
1) Coldplay “Live 2003”
2) The Autumn Defense “Circles”
3) Josh Ritter “Live at the Record Exchange”
4) Alain Vinet Mouvement “Day by Day Volume 1”
5) U2 “Live at Notre Dame”