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Summer TimeAs you can see from the list on the left I haven't been reading a whole lot lately. Well, I have been keeping up with my weekly dose of comic books, but otherwise I've been spending my time on other things. Preparing for next week's fantasy baseball draft. Catching up on my television (although I'm pleased to say that I am, now, all caught up). Doing things with friends. Actually, I guess it feels like I've either been spending time with friends or frittering the time away. Friday night I basically frittered away. As I did most of Saturday. But Saturday night I went to Borrone where I met John and Anders (and Anders' Titanium Powerbook) and we hung out for most of the evening. I don't think I've mentioned Anders very much. He and John were cow-orkers for most of the last two years, and Anders and I work together in a cross-functional manner fairly regularly. I mostly see him at work or at a mutual friend's place (such as John's), and occasionally we run into each other at Borrone. Sunday... well Sunday I woke up at 8 am, which felt like 7 am since Daylight Savings Time kicked in. I met Subrata, Becky and her husband, and Rollie and his wife at Hobees for breakfast, and then we spent the rest of the day at a Bridge tournament playing a "Swiss teams" match. Basically this means each pair of us (I played with Subrata) play another pair of a foursome so that our foursome plays both sides of eight different hands, and we play seven rounds of eight hands each. A very long match! Out of 140 total points for the day, we finished with 65 - a little below average. So not a great day. Had fun, though, and learned some things along the way. Got a couple of compliments from Subrata on my playing, which - since he's the human computer when it comes to playing a hand - is a Good Thing. Came home and mailed off my fantasy baseball keeper list (players from last year's less-than-stellar team whom I'm keeping for this year) and read for a bit before bed. The weekend sure went fast!
 Twice a year you hear people clamoring for the end of Daylight Savings Time. Other than wondering why we "save" daylight during the summer when we have more of it, I find myself hugely indifferent to its existence. But I was moved to wonder this: If we stopped changing the clock twice a year, would we go to permanently setting the clocks on winter time, or on summer time? Personally, I'd much rather have the clocks set on summer time - an hour later - because I love having day last deeper into the evening. Sure, in the dead of winter it would be dark when most people get up, but so what? It's already dark when they go home! But I came home tonight and was delighted that it wouldn't get dark for another hour. And during the summer it's great that it doesn't get dark until after 9 pm. So that would be my vote. But personally, I think if we do drop the biannual time-shift, what we should do is poll all the people who want to get rid of it which time they want to stay on... ...and then go with the other one. Because you just can't get everything you want.
Despite a single game played yesterday, today was the opening day of baseball season. I'm less pumped about it than I'd hoped I'd be, partly because the Red Sox have had a miserable spring training, with Nomar Garciaparra going under the knife for wrist surgery and therefore being out for two months and maybe more, and partly because of Major League Baseball's decision to start charging to hear broadcasts over the Web. No, thanks; this is my own personal line in the sand regarding the commercialization of the Web. If they want to make money off of the Web broadcasts, run commercials during the games. I don't mind. So I'm going to be less immersed in baseball than I'd expected to be. And so my enthusiasm is somewhat lacking. But maybe it will pick up once we have our fantasy draft and I start going to some games. I don't know whether Ceej is going to buy a Giants ticket package like she did last year (she's been strangely quiet for most of this year, actually), but I hope to see a few Giants games, and a bunch of A's games. The A's should be a great team, and the Giants should be good, but not as good as last year. Oh, and the anemic Red Sox offense could only muster a single run in support of Pedro Martinez today, and the Sox lost 2-1. I bet we're going to see a lot of games like that this season. Sigh.
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