This dumb ritual the world's governments have foisted on us is mindless, of course nothing of note or value actually happens, life goes on, paint still peels and all we do is expend huge amounts of human time and energy going from clock to clock, to car clock etc. only to forget at least one which will come back to bite us in the week ahead. 

DST is simply yet another way they express their ability to make us jump through doofus hoops twice a year. I can begin to understand why the good people we elect suddenly change when they get to DC, or Ottowa etc. - they now have POWER, they can wave their pens and make millions of people do inane things for no good reason!

Twice a year we're required to remind everyone with dumb saying which way to turn their clocks, in the Spring the great keeper of time taketh away an hour because when you wake up one Sunday morning it's already past time for coffee and already time for - whatever? Then with great benevolence that same great keeper of time in DC, Ottowa etc. giveth back that hour and one Sunday when we wake up - we got up an hour early? - makes sense to me, but try to explain that to a cat!

Of course all the ritual of these seasonal changes, dictated for some ancient obscure illogical reason, is lost in antiquity - today who cares? And, to that end Mexico has taken the first faltering step of saying "y'all go ahead, we'll stick with the old schedule" - which puts us out of sync with most of the modern world - boy, does that bring into play a whole other blog about manual labor in MX vs. the 20th century use of modern tools - but, I digress.

So, 'tis the Spring and I've "spranged," well, sort of, being retired time doesn't have a lot of meaning so who cares except to know when NASCAR starts? For example, I only wear my wrist watch when I go to Colo to see Mom in Oct, which is "normal" time, so it never gets changed to DST and no one notices because the rest of the year it's in the jewelry box.

And then there's the cats, this morning when the clock radio, tuned to XM radio 40's channel, clicked on, it kicked off with a rousing rendition of Sing Sing Sing by Benny Goodman (that will start your morning with a zing) - at what it thought was 6am (but now really 7am) Max immediately leaped on the bed, he must have got the memo about time change and thought it was already 7am and he was hungry - or maybe he's just got extra starch in his sails this morning, who knows what a cat thinks?

Now, tomorrow when I've reset all the clocks, timers etc. it will be dark:30 when the clock radio kicks in and Max, I and the outside cats will all sleepily trudge into our day in the dark, it takes a couple of weeks for everyone to adjust, I'm tempted to stay on "solar time" the heck with clocks there isn't anything wrong with "suns up, I'm hungry, it's dark, I'm sleepy".

Of course today being Mexico's day to go to DST does have one single blessing, now all the TV schedules are only one hour behind instead of two. In a previous thread I documented how programs come out of the eastern zone and for two weeks in the Spring and 2 more in the Fall we have to remember to add 2, or is it subtract 2 rather than only 1? - I can't remember, oh well.

It's also a changing time of year as all the wild Canadian snowbirds fly N (courtesy of Air Canada etc). This year the first two headed out last Weds so there was extra shopping and dinners etc. preceding their departure. Then Margaret booked it out of here yesterday, Saturday so that meant more activities. She packs a lot of her things and stores them in her car, Betty, and I put a car cover on it for the Summer.

I bring over some things from the casita to store here and this is also a bountiful harvest time as everyone cleans out their refrigerators and I now have enough mustard to cater a company picnic, olive oil (I'm sure I'll use that?) lots of soy, a package of premixed pie crust (sure, I bake weekly - NOT) remaining Coke Zero which may go bad if not consumed soon etc.

But, the best part of this time is that Margaret cooks up a Summer's supply of spaghetti sauce that I have carefully coded, labeled and frozen to see me through the harsh barren Summer months. Plus other delights like baked beans and smoked turkey leg, so we struggle as best we can in this outpost of civilization.

There is an interesting site we use to track traveling friends, it's http://flightaware.com/ which allows you to see the route of a flight and arrivals, delays etc. For instance in Jan when the G2 (girls two, Bev & Barb) came down through Atlanta we noticed they stopped in Houston, sure enough a medical emergency caused an unscheduled stop. So, now that the G3 are all back in the great frozen N, Max and I have to take care of the estate on our own.

The "estate" may change, it's early, but they are completely refurbishing Casa Nostra beside us, so it's bang bang bang 7 to 7. Then they surveyed the lots a bit W of us and are going to build several "vacation" (see fiesta time) homes there so that will go on for at least another 9 months, then there are the kennels across the street and to the W on the illegal land fill where they're going to breed mastiffs? I Emailed the Rental office Friday and told them to start looking for a new place, we're been here 3 1/2 years, so leaving will be hard, but staying may be harder, but as I said, it's early I'm sure there will be much more to the story.

As the old Burma-Shave signs said "Spring has sprung, grass has ris where last years careless driver is" - don't know what that has to do with anything, but just something that popped into my head?