daylight wastings

I'm not going to pretend that I understand much about how the curvature of the Earth affects time zones. I know that the sun rises and sets earlier (time wise) on the Eastern side than the Western side. This was always a nice effect during Ohio summers. Some nights the sun was still out until almost 10pm, whereas back in Virginia, the sun would be gone closer to 9pm (obviously). Though I much prefer the idea of living on the East Coast, I didn't at all mind living at the far end of the Eastern time zone, near Central. It led to great, long summer nights spent outside and a little more afternoon light in the winter.

Up here in Maine, though, I have no idea what's going on. Obviously we're on the East Coast, so the sun rises and sets on the "early" side of the zone. But the whole Earth is round thing has me a bit confused. For the most part, I've observed that this has meant the sun rises and sets even earlier. This summer the sun was rising before 6am. So. Early.

I never really notice that it gets light/dark earlier/later until I notice it, you know? In other words, the change is so gradual that there's nothing really to note until it starts getting dark at 5:30pm. Well, that seemed pretty early, especially for October. For a few weeks now it's been pitch black by 6:30pm. I didn't like this, but I figured I could live with it.

But now... now it's worse. Much worse. That darn daylights savings has messed things up even more. Yesterday dusk set in around 4pm. Did you catch that? 4pm. Completely dark by 5:30pm. Perhaps even earlier, I just happened to look outside again at 5:30pm. I now have to go to work with the knowledge that it will be dark when I leave... even if I don't stay late.

And it's not even winter yet. December 21 is going to suck.

Living up here, I think I would much prefer waking up in the dark (hell, the sun rises so relatively early that it's not really that dark), and still have the slight chance of seeing sun when I leave work for the day.