Sunday – Eastern Standard Time (Again)

Dear Diary:

It is 43.1 degrees Fahrenheit with 77% relative humidity. I’m typing this at 4:25 DST or 3:25 EST or 2:25 AST. Confused? You should be, this is the day we mess with the time space continuum and spend the day setting clocks on car radios, microwaves, cameras and coffee makers. Mobile phones and computers set themselves, Tomorrow those of you who are unfortunately enough to commute to the east will be blinded by solar glare. Adding insult to injury, your evening commute will be in late afternoon.

Pets and young children will not be fooled by the silliness of clock tinkering. All the myths about farmers, kids waiting for the bus in the dark, energy saving strategies will be repeated ad nauseum. It is madness and sadly legislation to change it fails again and again. The dilemma of clock tinkering has been addressed in a Grandpa Jones song, “Daylight Savings Time”.

Morning Routine

I was able to solve Wordle, Connections, Mini-crossword and Waffle without too much mental anguish. I’d like to take a vacation from these, but Waffle and Wordle keep statistics. If you miss a day, you break a streak. I had a streak of 176 wins with Wordle but was done in by a rhyming word with too many choices. That was a dark day. The game Connections has its own challenges since you need to guess the mental process of the game designer.

The mice are moving in for the winter. I trapped another one which will be offered to the crows along with some unsalted peanuts and dog food. I use spring traps because they are reliable, humane (compared to glue traps) and don’t use poison which can kill raptors. The crows dispose of them very neatly. Unchecked I would be overrun with the creatures and they are destructive as anyone knows who has to remove nests or clean up droppings.

Firewood

I had some maple trees and a large red oak tree taken down last year. I didn’t pay to have them removed because I wanted to use the firewood. A year later I’m getting around to cutting them up. My battery powered chainsaw was up the task, but physically it is quite taxing, It is going to take some time. I don’t have a wood splitter so I had a bit of exercise swinging a wood maul, sledge hammer and wedges. It was nice day to work outside.

On This Day – One Year Ago

Looking back to November 5, 2022. Ginny, Matt and I took a trip to the Ipswich River Wildlife Refuge We carried bags of black oil sunflower seed because the birds are so used to people that it is possible to feed them by hand. It is a lovely place with water features, unusual trees and a man-made rockery that was built in 1905. We are planning a return trip this year before it gets too cold.