A modest proposal about how to make this time change more palatable

Daylight Savings Time was supposed to save energy -- and it would, too, if we didn't spring ahead so darn early. It was just starting to be light out when we began our day at the Curmudgeon home last week. In another couple of weeks, but for the time change, we'd not need lights at all in the morning. But today, after the time change, it was full dark when the alarm clock called us back to consciousness.

Everyone likes the time change in the fall -- that one happy weekend is an hour longer -- but it is so much harder to lose an hour.

Long Suffering Spouse particularly hates this time change -- and she let me know all about it, in no uncertain terms, both last night and this morning.

Thus inspired, I've been trying to come up with a way to make this time change a little less awful.

As usual, the comics have pointed the way for me.

Perhaps you saw Tim Rickard's Brewster Rockit: Space Guy yesterday?

Brewster got me thinking. Why does the lost hour have to be sliced out of the middle of the night? Adding an extra hour to Saturday night makes sense in the fall, but taking one out in the spring... well, let's put it this way: I need all the beauty sleep I can get. Surely we could pick a better hour to lose than that.

So here's my modest proposal: Next year, let's start DST a few weeks later -- so we recapture the potential for energy savings -- and instead of having the clock go from 1:59 am to 3:00 am on Sunday morning, why not have the clocks jump from 1:59 pm to 3:00 pm on Friday afternoon.

Same lost hour -- but an entirely different attitude, don't you think?

Write your Congressman.