I know on what date we'll “fall back”
in 2044.
Why do I have that esoteric piece of
knowledge, you ask? Well, I answer, it has to do with the time
change this past weekend. Loraine and I both have these high-tech
alarm clocks, ones that use radio signals to keep up to the second
and ones that use high tech processors to know when Daylight Savings
Time begins and ends. It wouldn't surprise me, in fact, to know our
clocks have more computer power than what was used to send humans to
the moon.
But that's neither here nor there.
Sunday morning when we woke up
Loraine's clock had changed automatically, but mine hadn't. Mine was
living in it's own temporal dimension, thinking it was an hour ahead
of we mere mortals. I had no idea why; everything looked like it
should have changed automatically, but it did. I had to change the
time by hand, itself a rather technical feat considering how advanced
the clocks are. But after that the time was correct, and I totally
forgot about it.
Flash forward to yesterday morning.
Loraine's alarm went off as it usually does at 7am, and I, like I
usually do, rolled over to go back to sleep. Only out of the corner
of my eye I noticed that my clock said it was 6 am. I was kind of
puzzled about that; Loraine didn't say anything about waking up
early, and I don't think she'd roll out of bed at 6 am just for giggles.
That's about the time I noticed that the light indicating my clock
was on Daylight Savings Time was off.
That's right. Instead of changing
Sunday morning it changed yesterday morning, for no particular reason.
Of course, once I noticed that I
couldn't get back to sleep, and so having an extra hour added
to my day I decided to figure out what the heck was going on. I
checked my clock through and through. It was on the correct date, it
was set up to change between Daylight Savings Time and “Why The
Heck Is It Dark So Early” time, and everything else appeared to be
fine. Yet, it had changed time four days after it was
supposed to, and my little pea brain couldn't figure out why.
That's when Loraine noticed that I was
up & around earlier than usual. When I told her the reason, she
was as stumped as I. So I just sat around, trying to wake up. A few
minutes later, she came into our living room and asked a simple
question--
“Do you think the clocks have a year
setting”?
I have to admit, I couldn't answer the
question. I had never seen one, and the (pitifully lame) book that
came with the clocks never mentioned one. But that got me to
thinking, which as we all know can be a dangerous thing, and I headed
back into the bedroom to see if it did. After almost 10 minutes of
pushing buttons, and a lot of fumbling around just hoping something
would happen, I came across a screen that said “44”. I pulled
out my phone, and checked a calendar for 2044. November 6th,
2044, is the first Sunday of November, the Sunday on which we always
fall back. Yesterday, when my clock switched times, was November 6th, 2019.
My alarm clock, in an attempt to live
in its own temporal dimension, wasn't just an hour off. It was 25
years and an hour off.
I have no idea how it got that way.
It's switched the time the weekend it's supposed to for several years
now without a problem. Why it just started to think it's 2044 instead of 2019 is
beyond my pay grade. Maybe a power outage fried its brain. Maybe
the little plastic cow I have sitting next to it managed to change it
somehow. Maybe the clock, of its own volition, jumped ahead into the
future to see if the Lions still suck. I don't the how; I just know
that it did.
I reset the “44” to “19” and,
with any luck, things will now be working okay. However, if come
March and the time doesn't change back to Daylight Savings Time, I'll know
where to look. And I'll also probably be able to learn on which
March date the time will change in 2045.
******
Tomorrow, the story of what happened
AFTER I fixed the clock.
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