d = rt

Just when I think I have it all figured out.  This morning when I reached out to push "snooze" on my alarm at 5:30, I turned it off instead.  Fortunately, dogs do not allow me to sleep very late, just late enough to have to hurry.  Plan B.  Cutting a corner here, letting the dishwasher wait until I come home, deciding that my hair can survive another day, skipping a lunch, all quite doable.  However, the puppy must be taken out for a "walk."  This is not optional.  He isn't big enough yet to spend the day out with the big dogs, but either he is catching on quickly - and really likes the puppy biscuits I have for treats for good dogs - or I am becoming well trained in the habits of puppies, or, at least, this puppy in particular.  At any rate, in spite of an extremely cooperative performance on the part of puppy, I was nearly fifteen minutes late hitting the road.

The temptation to floor it once I am out on the open highway is almost irresistable, but resisting seems like a good idea, since there are three police forces who share jurisdiction over that stretch of road and they are vigilant, as many a student late for class has discovered.  Thank goodness for cruise control.  I confess, I did set the cruise at just short of 70 this morning instead of my usual 67 or 68, knowing as I did so that I wasn't really gaining anything significant.  I worked it all out a couple of years ago while carpooling with a friend.  She usually makes the run at 75, and at the time gas prices had peaked out near four dollars a gallon, so I was driving at a very conservative 55.  She did the driving, and I bought the gas.  I figured that I was averaging two extra trips per tank of gas in my rambling wreck, she was unmoved.  She could use the time more than the money. 

One day when I was driving myself and she went flying by me in her SUV, I decided to figure out how much time she was actually saving.  Somewhere long ago and far away I had learned, as all children of engineers must, that distance equals rate times time: d=rt - always one of my favorites for its simplicity and versatility and no fractions.  I assumed that the highway speed section was actually twenty miles, instead of nineteen and a little bit, and that I was driving 60 while she drove 75 (after all, I was doing the arithmetic in my head while driving down the highway, and mental arithmetic has never been one of my strong suits).  Never mind, only math nerds really care about that sort of thing - and they can do these calculations without even thinking about it.  I found the result of my calculations surprising enough that I checked them with pencil and paper and calculator when I got to work.  The extra fifteen miles per hour gained her exactly three minutes.  Those fool traffic signals make much more difference in the travel time than the increase in speed.  And knowing all that still didn't stop me from hurrying and being quite certain that my hurry had gotten me there in time for class.

Daylight Savings Time

It was a better day for traffic signals today.  I only had to come to a full stop twice - note the distinction:  I did barrel on through one that was way down the pink side of amber, and at another I had to coast down to "just barely" before it changed, but on my score card those count on the green side.

I am determined to enjoy the next few mornings.  We have just passed the calendar point at which the elevation of the sun at my preferred departure time allows me to turn out onto the highway (at an intersection without a signal) before the sun is high enough over the horizon to blind me to the approach of large vehicles towing silver tanks of milk or SUVs travelling 15 mph over the speed limit.  Getting out there can be an adventure.  Just now, though, I can look back to the east and see those shiny ribbons where the tar leached out of the asphalt during high summer and know that if I can see them unbroken all the way back to the bend, I can wrangle my elderly low-powered behemoth out there without fear of imminent destruction.  This will last for another week or so, until we go off daylight savings time - that kicks the sun an hour higher in the sky and it all happens again.

I haven't ever quite figured out daylight savings time.  I know how it works, of course:  spring ahead; fall back and all that - lose an hour of sleep at one end, gain it back at the other.  I just don't understand why - and what it is supposed to be saving.  I am pretty sure that the sun shines for the same number of hours on any given day regardless of what time we call it.  I suppose some of those long summer days could spare an hour of sunlight - if I could save it for one of the miserably cold and short days in the middle of winter, but they won't let me do that. 

Why can't we all just use Greenwich Mean Time or some other designated standard?  Who made the prime meridian run through Greenwich, anyway?  School could just start at some sun-appropriate hour.  And I would be far less likely to arrive at the airport an hour late because it is in central time, not "real" time (which is the designated time where I live), because 10 o'clock would be 10 o'clock, not 9 o'clock.  I suppose we would have to all go on a 24 hour clock, too.  It wouldn't make any significant difference when calling the cousins in Ireland, it would still be necessary to figure the "displacement" - 2200 hours would be late evening there and the middle of the afternoon here, but that wouldn't be more difficult than figuring out that we are seven hours earlier than GMT and if it is 7 pm here it is 2 am there - or is it six hours...

So - what am I? A sheep, already?
Friends and colleagues are blogging, so here I go, too.  I suspect that this is a device to facilitate procrastination - as if I needed help to procrastinate.  As long as I am doing this, I AM writing - and I can always work on the novel tomorrow - or grade the papers - or crunch the numbers - or wash the dishes - or walk the dog - or ...

Five days a week I get in my car and drive about twenty miles south down HW70 to work.  It isn't a particularly spectacular drive, but it is my drive and my time.  Sometimes it is the only genuinely private time I have in the course of a day.  There are others who make this daily commute, but we are each enclosed in our metal cocoons essentially alone.  I can sing along with the classic rock on the radio, or talk to students in terms that I would never use to their faces.  I can plan the day, the coming evening, the future, or my next "project."  Or I can just watch and note the daily differences and seasonal changes on "my" piece of highway. 

There are seven traffic lights on my drive - one in the town where I live and six in the town where I work.  There are more traffic signals in the town where I live, but I don't have to go through those intersections on my way of a morning.  Sometimes I think that I can gauge the day by the number of reds that I hit.  If I get all the way to the parking lot on green, surely the omens are good.  On the other hand, if I have to stop for every single one of them, not only does it make me concerned about the dangers of the remainder of the day, it adds a good five to ten minutes to my commute. 
This was a 5 out of 7 red light day.  By the time I pulled in, my preferred parking spot was occupied and three on beyond it.  I try to leave the house around 7 am for a reason - and it is not to park half-way down the lot from the nearest door into the building.  Although, I really don't mind the walk in the morning so much - until it gets cold - I am a total wimp about cold weather - but I really hate trudging out and out and farther out at the end of the day.  Sure enough, perversity was the order of the day.  I'm not sure why I am starting this on a 5/7 day, maybe my own perversity is in operation here.