Why I hate switching to Daylight Savings Time

Saturday night before we went to bed we switched all the clocks.
Counting the stove and the microwave, there about a dozen in the house.
Plus the computers and the cell phones, but those update all by themselves, apparently by magic.
Then there's my wristwatch.
And the clock on my car radio, which I don't know how to switch, so it's only accurate between November and mid-March.
I really thought we had them all covered.
But I forgot about the one on my desk at work. Thus I was just getting ready to leave at 5:45, thinking it was only 4:45, when I mentioned to my boss that I was leaving a few minutes early because I had a dentist's appointment.
"Early?" he said, looking puzzled.
"Yes, my appointment is at 5:10, so..."
"But it's 5:45," he said.
"No it's only 4..." Oh. OH!
Damn.
Called the dentist. Apologized for being an idiot. Will reschedule appointment.
No wonder the afternoon seemed so long...

Invasion of Privacy

Today I received this letter in the mail.

Personally, I find this alarming. They can see inside my arteries?? Just who are "they," anyway? And how do they do that without my noticing? I think this might be worse than having my phone tapped.

Time

My Dad used to tell me that as he got older, time seemed to speed up ,and the days and weeks just flew by.He was around 80 when he told me that, but I'm beginning to feel that way already, so I can't imagine what it will be like when I'm that age. I suppose the lesson here is "make every minute count," but nobody does that, we all waste time. An alternate lesson might be, "Try not to feel guilty about all the time you're wasting." That's a lesson I have a better chance of being able to live up to.

An un-scientific Mind

Things I wonder about:

1. Last week we recreated a science experiment that I saw demonstrated on TV by someone from the Museum of Science and Industry. (See the video below.) We threw a cup of boiling water into the air when it was 9 below zero here, and the water froze mid-air. But when we tried it first with cold water, which intuitively seems to make more sense, since cold water is already, well, colder, it didn't work. Why?

2. The shortest distance between 2 points is a straight line; but if you're flying from, say, Paris to Chicago, you have to follow the curvature of the earth, so does that mean it's not really a straight line? If you really went straight, would you have to bore a tunnel through the earth?

These are the things I wonder about, because in His great wisdom, G-d blessed me with a very curious mind, but unfortunately not the mathematical or scientific talents to understand those things!

Quilt

I made a quilt for my granddaughter. I just finished it tonight. Here's a picture of it.

Why I even hate ONLINE shopping

I lied in the post about yesterday when I said the rest of the day passed uneventfully.

Here's what happened:

Walgreens is having a sale on digital prints: 15 cents each for 100 or more. I haven't put any photos in the photo albums since last February, so I decided this was good time to get this project done. At about 9 PM I sat down at the computer and began uploading a year's worth of digital pictures to the Walgreens website.

It took 3 hours.

At the end, when it was time to order the prints and check out, some problem had developed with the website and it wouldn't let me place the order. At 1 AM I gave up and went to bed, figuring I would just leave the photos in my "Photo Cart" and try again in the morning.

Which I did, but the website still wasn't working. So I gave up for the second time and went to work.

Tonight when I came home from work I tried again, and got this very unpleasant message: "YOUR PHOTO CART IS EMPTY."

aaarrrrgggghhhhh!

See, THIS is why I hate shopping. Even online shopping.

Winter Still Life

Have A Nice Day

Yesterday morning I discovered that it's possible to be an idiot in at least 3 different ways, and all before 9:00 AM.

Way # 1: I congratulated myself for getting out of bed as soon as the alarm went off at 6:45, and spent an hour on the treadmill; and when I went back upstairs at 8:00, hubby said, "Weren't you supposed to meet Ida for breakfast at 7:45?"

Oops. I spent 10 frantic minutes trying to get in touch with Ida, without success, since I don't have her cell phone number.*

*Later I called Ida to apologize for being an idiot, and she said, "That's OK, I'm an idiot too- I wasn't there either, I overslept."

Way # 2: When leaving for work at 8:40, I stepped out into the lovely, powdery, unblemished snow that had fallen during the night--and promptly slipped and fell all the way down the steps and landed on my butt at the bottom. I was holding my car keys, three matted 11 x 14 photographs, and a bulletin board. The prints got full of snow, the bulletin board broke into pieces, and my keys went flying. It took several minutes to find them.

Way #3: Since I was late by the time I got to work, due to the falling incident, all of the spaces in the parking lot were full, so I had to park on the street. Remarkably, there was a space right across the street from the building. I backed into the space--but before I was all the way in, the car got stuck in a frozen, rutted, gray mess of ice and snow, which isn't surprising since the City of Chicago does not believe in plowing the side streets. Now the front of my car was sticking out into the street, and I couldn't move it forwards or backwards. I went into the building and asked the maintenance man for a shovel, and he (and another large man who was passing by) spent half an hour getting my car out. I found another, cleaner, spot in the next block, and finally got into my office, with fingers and toes frozen and boots wet and filthy.

Fortunately, the rest of the day passed uneventfully--when the day starts out like that, it can only get better!