April 3, 1990
Dear Everyone:
Well, it has come, that dreaded time of the year:
Daylight Saving Time.
That time when people wander through their homes,
asking themselves: “Now, let
me see. Is it an hour
forward or an hour backward?
Or did I already do it last night after the party?!!!”
Last Saturday, I made a mental count and announced
that there were 14 clocks in my apartment that would need resetting.
“Kevin” said that 14 was excessive.
But then “Sue” started counting out loud the ones in her place
and deduced that she had 5 in her kitchen alone, including the one on
the stove.
(Oops!
Forgot the one on the stove.
Make mine 15.)
The truth is, just about everything, except the
cat, now comes with a clock attached to it in some way.
The radio, the TV, the VCR, the furnace/air conditioner.
And those things that don’t have clocks, we plug into timers.
If you count the number of time pieces whose single and only
function is to show the time, the number drops down to 2.
And one of them was a gift.
Still, it is nice to have machines that can think
for themselves (such as VCR’s and coffee makers) as long as we tell them
what time it is. If we allow
the government (outside of Arizona which doesn’t observe Daylight Saving
Time) to change the time on us every year, that’s our own fault.
Last Saturday, I went Whale Watching with a group
of people from my office plus assorted spouses, friends and total
strangers. This was out of
Half Moon Bay, which has grown considerably in recent years.
It now has both a McDonald’s
and a Burger King.
Whale Watching consists of standing on a Small
Passenger Vessel (we were the small passengers), scanning the sea near
and far until someone spots a spout or a “flute print”.
Then the captain slows the boat down and tries to parallel the
whale’s course in hopes that we’ll see it when it comes up for air.
Actually, Whale Watching consists of being lucky
enough to be looking in the right direction at the right time to see a
dark shape come to the surface, a glimpse of a blow hole and a brief
“poof” of sea water. Then
you point and yell “There!”
You’re not supposed to yell “there”, of course.
The boat is at the center of a clock, with 12:00 at the bow and
6:00 at the stern. Starboard
is 3:00; port is 9:00. (They
do this so landlubbers don’t have to learn the terminology.)
What you’re supposed to do is yell “Spout at 2:00!” or something
like that. This tells
everyone else where to look.
My problem is:
I can spot whales. I
just can’ tell time.
(“There! At 2:00, well maybe
1:00; maybe 1:30.”)
We did see 3 Grey Whales and 1 Minky Whale, plus
assorted sea lions, pelicans “common merles”, etc.
Nicolle, our Oceanic Society guide got real excited when she
spotted the Minky Whale because they’re much more rare than the Grey
Whales.
This does help to explain why those Talbot
photographs of whales at sunset, and so on, are $40 per print.
I guess he has to wait a long time to get those pictures.
Not that I’d pay $40 for a print.
Sunday morning, “Jeannie” called to invite me to
join “Marshall” and her for breakfast.
“It’s 8:30,” she said.
“No, no,” I replied.
“At the tone, Pacific Daylight Time will be… 9:30.”
“Jeannie”:
“Again?
But we did that last
year!”
I think she got “Marshall” to change all of her clocks before he headed back to Fresno.
Love, as always,
Pete
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