Yesterday, well overnight, we ‘fell back’ in Spain.
Spring forward, fall back, as the old saying goes…
Supposedly we get that extra hour of sleep this time of year – at least theoretically speaking. But the fact that Nog & I stayed up way too late watching the Sopranos on dvd kinda put the kibosh on us getting any extra sleep, especially as our cats’ belly clocks hadn’t switched over and they were demanding breakfast at the usual time.
Just wondering which countries make this time change, and when they do it. I’ve also never understood why this time change happens. I mean, you get the same amount of daylight overall. When we switch over in springtime it’s called ‘daylight saving time’ – why? What is the point of this?
casa azahar 
Much of Australia went forwards last night. The theory is that the extra hour of sunlight in the morning and evening during Summer is better used “doing stuff” rather than lying abed. (re-reads – suggests to spouse it may be a good idea to be lying abed. Rubs sudden red mark on face). So, if we move our clocks around, we avoid wasting all that wonderful sunshine and actually save some of the lighting power we use. That was why it was brought in in the first place, during one of the stoushes Europe had during the 20th century.
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We fell back last night. Still have not adjusted. Maybe that is why I am awake right now. Or it could be the steroid.
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The whole clock-changing thing is a right mess in Australia. We have three timezones during winter, and five during summer. Quite irritating, really. Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland don’t change their clocks; all the other mainland states and Canberra changed yesterday. Tasmania changed to summer time a month ago, just to be annoying.
As far as daily life goes I quite like putting the clock forward in summer. It means that I get to spend time in the garden in daylight when I get home from work. Without changing the clock we’d have dawn at 4am in the middle of summer; I can’t help thinking that would be a little bit silly.
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That does sound confusing! I think there is one province in Canada (Saskatchewan?) that doesn’t change the clocks. But the rest of the country is the same.
I know that Spain and the UK change on the same day, but I’m not sure about the rest of Europe.
I’d prefer it if we always stayed on daylight saving time – I think it’s much nicer having an extra hour of light at the end of the day.
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I think most of, if not all, Europe changed yesterday. It gave me an extra hour in bed readning the newspapers and drinking coffee.
The annoying thing this morning was the Queen Mum’s alarmclock. She had forgot to set it back so it woke me up 5:30. When I finally managed to go back to sleep my own yelled…
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There are some states which don’t observe Daylight Savings time, and some states, like Indiana, in which *parts* of the state do and others don’t.
I prefer when Daylight Savings ends- like now- and daylight lasts longer into the evening than during Daylight Savings, when we get it in the morning. But that is just because I arrive at the office before the rise rises most days regardless. 😉
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Huh? Looks like I need an axtra hour’s sleep this morning, too.
I prefer daylight savings, which ENDS now, when daylight lasts longer into the evening, because I tend to leave for work before sunrise.
I’m already all confused.
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Yeah, last week it felt kinda cool leaving the house at 8am just before the sun started coming up. It feels extra peaceful or something … much better than it getting dark at 6pm (which still hasn’t happened; can’t remember what time it got dark yesterday, think it was around 7.30).
When I used to live in northern Manitoba, in winter it was still dark at 8.30am and got dark again sometime around 5pm. Summer days were extra long though – sunset finished around 2am and sunrise was about 6am. Which I think is similar to how it is in Sweden – is that right, dragonqueen?
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even worse…
at my latitude, 63.8 N, the day today is 8 hrs 19 mins. Sunrise at 07:12 and sunset at 15:31.
… and its almost two months until solstice…
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Apparently in the UK it came in in 1915 under the orders of the Defence Against the Realm Act (aka DORA) – as did regulation of pub opening hours – but nobody remembered to repeal them.
Note, however, that winter hours (Greenwich Mean Time in the UK) are the default, so dawn and dusk are meant to be where they are now. Every so often a politician fulminates about the change and demands that we keep to BST – Jeffrey ‘Proven Liar’ Archer attempted to launch a Bill…but consider the poor folk in northern Scotland; if we kept to BST, they wouldn’t see daylight until after 10am!
(Mind you…I hate it when we have to start driving home in the dark. Although it does make the pumpkins look good!)
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We’re not quite as bad off as Dragonquuen. Today sunrise was at 6:21 AM (shortly after I arrived at work) and sunset will be 4:48 PM (about the time I leave work for the day). The length of the day will be 10hours, 26minutes, 54seconds.
It still doesn’t sound like much. Especially when the work day lasts longer than the actual day.
(Of course, I still prefer autumn and winter to spring and summer… I just need something to gripe about year-round ;-))
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Next year, in the US, the govmint wants to move the spring-forward part of the program back a couple of weeks to 1st Sunday in mid-March, and fall-backward to a week later, 1st Sunday in November.
It’s crazy — if you need lights on, you need ’em on, whether early in the morning or in the evening. What they could really do that’d *help* is shorten the work day, then we could all play longer! 🙂
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‘course, some of us are old enough to remember the days when it was predicted that increased automation would mean more leisure time. HAH!!!
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(in depressed tone…)
Yes, this is the result of machines and computers taking away some of our labors. What labor is left we end up doing for them. 😕
Sorta like it was supposed to save trees when we went to a “paperless society”.
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I don’t know, our paperless office uses more paper than you would believe.
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Well, I now have ‘paperless’ bank stuff going on … don’t get statements sent in the mail anymore. I just check out my bank account online.
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I just noticed today that I needed to change the time on all my blogs – it doesn’t happen automatically. So all my comments have been an hour behind for the past week. Which means alji didn’t beat me to finding that November poem yesterday. 😉
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That’s cheating az! How do you know mine are not an hour out?
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I posted this at 11:23
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Oh all right then … you win! 😉
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