This pisses me off...

Daylight Savings Time. Who do we think we are that we can just pass a bill to say what time it is? I lived in Indiana and for about 40 years we did not have daylight savings time. Everything ran smooth and you could count on the constant of time to never change. You could welcome the earlier sunrises of spring to bring us out of the depths of an Indiana winter. Television shows were on at the same time all year.

Then our Governer Mitch Daniels in 2005 would have you believe our state is on the verge of anarchy with civilization collapsing because we are not aligned chronologically with Chicago to the west or Cleveland to the east. Of course we couldn't decide which city we should align with so most of the state went one way and some went the other way, with some counties changing their minds at the last moment. So twice a year we change our clocks to supposedly be able to have financial transactions with like timed cities. This is to save the state of Indiana tons of money.

Here is the main reason it pisses me off. I used to be able to ride my bicycle to work from May to September. Now it is too freaking dark in the morning to commute on a bicycle safely and it cuts 2 months off my ride time. I would normally save $4 a day every day I rode to work, so 60 days X $4 is $240. Not to mention the exercise I am not getting. Plus I have to have the lights on in the morning to get ready to work. You can see where I am going with this.

And now, the state of Indiana has extended DST into November. So if you throw in the safety factor of kids having to get on the bus in the dark. The cost of businesses having to turn on the lights for that hour in the morning, I don't see how this could possibly be saving money for Indiana. This is just stupid, It reminds me of when I first moved to Texas in 1981. I was furnishing my apartment and went to Kmart to buy a shower curtain on a Sunday. I carried it to the checkout and was told I could not buy it on Sunday because of the Blue Law. They named off a bunch of seemingly unrelated things that could not be purchased on Sunday. However the pawn shops were open and I could by a machine gun with no waiting. The Blue Law was repealed (after I moved back to Indiana) and Texas realized how outdated the law was and we moved on with our lives.

This is what Indiana should do with Daylight Savings Time. Admit your mistake Mitch, repeal DST and maybe you will get re-elected. Or maybe Jill Long-Thompson should campaign on that platform... I'll vote for her then. Maybe we could form a focus group with a catchy acronym like ReTArDS (Repeal The ARchaic Daylight Savings). Abunch of us with focus group t-shirts lobbying should get the job done...

While I was telling you about Texas, I remembered an experience I had at an Arby's restaurant in Garland outside Dallas. Me and a friend had sat down to eat there and talk. They had drink refills for 25 cents, and at that time the Texas state sales tax was 5%. So I took our cups to the counter and asked for 2 refills. The kid at the counter asked for 53 cents. So I asked what was the sales tax on 25 cents and he said 1 penny. So I told him I wanted to pay for them seperately; 26 cents x 2 or 52 cents. He sid I could not do that, so I told hime I changed my mind, I just wanted 1 refill. He gave me 1 refill for 26 cents. I then told him now I wanted another one. He refused to give me one and said he was going to get his manager. I asked him if the Texas sales tax was 5%, then why isn't it broken up 20, 40, 60, 80, 1 dollar? So the sales tax on on 50 cents would be 2 cents. Evidently there was some sneaky psychology going on at the treasury department. Well the manager came out and told the kid to give me my sodas, and I could pay for them any way I pleased. The manager smiled, and I told him if I was manager, I would be looking at the register tapes, changing all the 53's to 2 26's and putting a penny in a jar. He laughed. Now I'm sure there are going to be 2 schools of thought out there reading this. Kudos to the ones that share my triviality.