with the heat of 1000 blazing suns (that have not risen yet)

I LOATHE daylight saving time.

LOATHE it.

This is because I go to work at 7 am. It had been just light, the sun coming up, feeling like the day was beginning.

But now - today - it was the dead inky dark of night. I try not to personalize things but I feel almost as if the clammy, greasy hand of some Congress-critter has reached out to slap me in the face - because this is the first year for the "new special extension" of DST.

(They could, I think, at the very least, not require us to pay income taxes on income earned during this week).

This has also reactivated my periodic insomnia - any kind of jet-laggy messing with my schedule will do that. So not only did I get one hour of sleep stolen from me, I lost several more because my body's all mucked up.

And don't speak to me of "more hours of daylight in the afternoon." I frequently work late into the day - until 7 pm or so. I often have evening meetings that require me to sit in a windowless room while I know that SOMEWHERE, some idle soul is out playing golf. Or tennis. Or is out hiking. That "extra hour" of sunlight (which was STOLEN from my morning, thankyouverymuch) doesn't usually benefit me because I'm busy during that time.

And besides, since I get up at 5, by 8 pm I'm really ready to fold up for the day. You're not going to get me out playing sand volleyball or some damn thing. (Oh, great - I see what's coming next. DST will be recruited to fight "Teh Waaar on Obesity!!11!!" because people can be exhorted to use that "extra" hour of daylight to run around and get all sweaty. (Never mind that exercising within a couple hours of bedtime is a bad idea for people prone to insomnia.)

So I see DST as no net gain, and in fact, a net loss.

(And weekends don't count. Especially here, where in the summer it gets hot as Hades during the 10 am until 4 pm time-frame, so you still have to haul your backside out of bed early if you want to mow the lawn or cultivate a flowerbed without dying).

So: cranky today.

Doubly cranky because I discovered something in the copy room. Remember how I've been bitching about how I seem to be the only one who ever goes to get paper for the printer/copier when it runs out? Well, while waiting on a print run this morning I idly opened the doors of the cabinets in there - cabinets I assumed were unused as this room has been repurposed from something else.

And what did I discover, but a secret stash of copier paper, placed there (apparently) by one of my colleagues, so he will not have to run and get paper when the copier or printer runs out.

Gee, thanks. Nice for telling me. Nice for offering to help when I'm being pulled in fifteen directions at once and the damn printer runs out of paper two minutes before I'm due in class (BECAUSE YOU USED ALL THE PAPER PREVIOUSLY) and I have to almost break the sound barrier to get paper and get everything I need for that class printed, and you HEARD me complaining about how I'm "the only one who ever gets paper."

Of course, now, I face the ethical dilemma - I am not 100% sure this is not someone's private, self-purchased supply of paper (we have one person who's working on a textbook and at one point he said something about buying paper to use for his revisions). So do I leave it, pretend I didn't see it, and maybe have to keep running across the building every time the person ahead of me uses the last piece of paper, or do I take from the supply, figuring it's not in a locked cabinet, it doesn't have "Dr. X's private paper supply" written on the box, and after all, I've been fetching more than my share of paper?

Or do I do the same - get a "private stash" from the store room and keep it (maybe in my office) so I don't always have to run to get paper.

I don't know but I will say the idea of someone keeping a "secret" stash of paper just so they don't have to run to get new paper - and then not telling people who are in a big, big hurry that there's replacement paper close at hand - irks me a little bit. I used to keep a "secret" stash but everyone knew about it...so the "stash" wound up being depleted kind of fast.