25 October 1998: An Extra Hour

Sunday, 25 October 1998:

An Extra Hour

I completely spaced that Daylight Savings Time ended last night. Fortunately, I usually listen to the radio when I wake up in the morning, so picked up on the announcer reporting the time as an hour earlier than I'd thought it was. I think I've changed all the clocks in the house; I'll change my car tomorrow when I go into work.

Anyway, so I woke up at 8:30 today rather than 9:30. Still slept about 9 hours last night.

I find it peculiar that we are now off Daylight Savings Time. Shouldn't we be trying to "save daylight" at the time of the year when the days are shorter, i.e., in the winter? Apparently not.

Today is my mother and my sister's birthday, so happy birthday to them! I phoned them each earlier today - first time I've talked to my sister in quite some time! It sounds like they've had nice birthdays.

I caught up on a whole bunch of stuff at home, including the rest of the stuff I had taped (such as a really funny Batman/Superman episode entitled "Girls' Night Out", in which Batgirl and Supergirl take on Livewire, Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn). Also watched a couple of football games, although again I didn't so much "watch" as have them on in the background while doing other things. I got through a whole bunch of magazines I had saved up - some issues from one of the periodic free MacWorld subscriptions I seem to luck into every so often, and a whole bunch of old New Yorkers.

In the evening I went downtown and finished reading MYST: The Book of D'ni. It started out really promisingly, with Atrus and Catherine trying to rebuild the city of D'ni, but then it went off into a strange tangent involving an Age they discover, into a plot involving the ethics of slavery (which are pretty much what you would guess), and sort of petering out at the end. This was particularly disappointing since we're left with little understanding of what exactly happened with Atrus and Catherine's sons in the first game (why they turned out as they did, what Atrus thought of how he dealt with them). Also, the book seems to take place after Riven, which is rather peculiar. It seems that they could have done more to tie the books directly into the games, which would have been pretty cool, but they didn't.

Oh, well. Now I've read all three of the novels, and I can stop. (Although I don't think they have plans to publish any more.)

Shortly after I finished the book and started the next Bujold Vorkosigan novel, Cetaganda, another person at the coffee shop woke me up and pointed out that someone outside was trying to attract my attention. Well, if it wasn't my friend John from California, and his local friend Dave. John was in Milwaukee for his brother's wedding, and apparently came to town for the day, which I hadn't known he was going to do.

So we sat around for an hour or so and chatted, and afterwards John came back to my apartment to see my place (I'd forgotten he'd been here before, but it's changed a lot since then) and we chatted a little more, especially about all the jazz I've bought since I visited him. It was nice to see him, and he'll be back in a month or so for Thanksgiving, and he invited me to his Mom's for the dinner. (He's cooking, so I guess he can do that!)

Oh, and I thought about including his e-mail address and asking everyone to send him e-mail voting on whether he's stocky or spindly, but I decided that would be too crass even for me. Besides, he might dis-invite me from Thanksgiving! :-)

You know, Calista Flockhart (the star of the TV show Ally McBeal) is really pretty much the antithesis of what I consider an attractive woman. Just thought I'd share that.

Michael Rawdon (Contact)