Monday, March 19, 2007, 05:12
Nervous Wreck
My nerves are shot.
It all started one day last week when Snowflake decided to jump up on the computer and then hop up on top of the small bookcase in my office where I keep my reference books. I've got a thesaurus up there and Bartlett's Familiar Quotations and the AP Stylebook as well as other kinds of references. Very handy. The books are right above the computer. All I have to do is stand up and grab one when I need it.
Once Snowflake got up on top of the bookcase, she discovered that it made a handy little place to take a nap.
Actually, I was kind of thinking that it was a good place for Snowflake to take a nap, too. I mean, really. If she's up on top of the bookcase, she's not jumping on the keyboard and changing file names or deleting files or deleting my e-mail addresses or adding words to newspaper stories or blogs or e-mail messages.
I continued to think the bookcase was a good place for Snowflake to hang out -- until she jumped down. I wasn't really paying attention to the kitten at the time. I was writing a newspaper story.
And that's when the lamp landed in my lap.
One second I was typing.
The next second, I was holding onto the lamp, heart in my throat, adrenalin pumping double-time.
Snowflake seemed to think nothing of it. She hopped down off the desk and went on her merry way.
With my heart still thumping, I stood up on shaky legs and put the lamp back where it belonged. The lamp is a necessary part of my office equipment. It illuminates the keyboard so I can see what I'm doing. The light fixture in the room is behind me on the wall next to the door. When I turn on the room light, it doesn't help that much because it doesn't really light up the keyboard.
Since then, Snowflake has knocked the lamp down two more times while hopping off the bookcase.
Sunday afternoon was the last straw. The lamp hit the top of the computer with a tremendous crash before bouncing down into my lap.
"What are you doing with the lamp?" Randy asked as he came into the office. He had just arrived home from a friend's house.
I turned to look at him.
"This is the third time Snowflake has knocked the lamp down on top of me. My nerves are shot," I said. My heart was thudding in my chest, and my hands were shaking.
Randy unplugged the lamp and then picked it up. "I'm going to fix that," he said, heading down the hall toward the basement.
"What are you doing to do?" I said.
"I'm going to get strip of wood to bolt down over the lamp base. That way she won't be able to move it when she jumps down," he said, opening the basement door.
A few minutes later, he returned. I finished what I was doing at the computer and vacated my chair.
Randy climbed up on the chair to screw the piece of wood over the lamp base.
Snowflake thought Randy's activities looked pretty interesting, so she climbed up to help.
"There," Randy said. "That ought to keep the lamp from crashing down."
I reached up to test it. "Yup. That should do it," I said.
Thank goodness I don't have to worry about the lamp anymore.
Now, if only I could convince Snowflake that she shouldn't grab the computer mouse cord when I'm trying to move files into folders. For some odd reason, the mouse doesn't seem to work very well when a kitten has all of her claws wrapped around the cord and the mouse doesn't want to move. . .
LeAnn R. Ralph
Saturday, March 17, 2007, 13:59
A Time for Change
Is anyone else having difficulty adjusting to Daylight Saving Time? Or is it just me?
When DST comes in April, it usually takes me a few days to get squared away with it.
But coming so early in March has really thrown me off kilter. It's been almost a week, and I still don't know what time it is!
I look outside at the level of light and think, "oh, it's 6 a.m." But when I glance at the clock on the stove as I'm pouring a cup of coffee, it's a jolt to see 7 a.m.
"That's not right. It's 6, not 7," I find myself thinking.
And the experience of not really knowing what time it is continues all day long.
"I've got time to do some more work yet before I feed the horses," I find myself thinking.
And then I realize that, no, it's not 4 p.m., the clock says it's 5 p.m.
"Time to go out and feed the horses," I think. "The clock says it's 5 p.m. Except it's not really 5, it's only 4."
And then later on. . .
"Boy. We're having supper awfully late," I'll say to Randy.
The clock says it's 8 p.m. Except that it's not 8 p.m. It's only 7 p.m.
Randy says he is having difficulty with DST this early, too. When he drives to work, he finds himself thinking that he didn't realize he had left for work so early. Then he realizes he is on time. It's the sun that's late coming over the horizon as he's driving east. Except that the sun's not late coming up. The clock is early.
My sister says she is having difficulty adjusting to the time change as well. And my brother says the same thing.
If the purpose to switch to DST so early in March was to save a little bit of energy on lights with more daylight in the evening when people are home and would have a tendency to turn lights on -- how much is the country losing all together in lost productivity because people don't know what time it is?
Most certainly, multiplied by millions of households, the country is going to save a certain amount of energy.
But what's the cost of people sitting around work for the first hour or two, thinking to themselves "What am I doing here so early?" before they can really get their act together and start thinking?
It would seem to me that in this case, we're comparing pennies to dollars. Even minimum wage is much, much more money per hour than it costs to have a light bulb turned on for an hour. Especially a fluorescent bulb. (If you haven't switched to all compact fluorescents in your house, you should consider it. They use a fraction of the electricity used by regular old incandescent bulbs. And they last a lot longer -- years as compared to months.)
All I can say is -- I hope I can get fully squared away with the time change pretty soon. Even now, when the sun is just starting to shine through the trees and into the east window of my office, I'm thinking, "Oh, it's almost 8 a.m." But of course, the clock on my computer says it is almost 9 a.m.
Because we've been thrown off on our daylight by three weeks, it is Randy's theory that it will take at least three weeks to get used to the time change. As I said in an earlier blog, when I get up in the morning, it seems like January. But in the evening, with the clock saying it is 8 p.m. and still light out, it seems like early May.
No wonder I'm so confused. . .
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If the change to DST in March has got you wondering what time it is, send me an e-mail and I will post your reply in my blog. To send me an e-mail, go to the link on the left-hand side of this page.
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LeAnn R. Ralph
