Adjusted

Perhaps it's simply the result of being in better physical shape, but I've felt a lot better after the switch to Daylight Savings Time a week ago.  I woke up that morning well rested and grateful for the extra hour on the clock.  Even though this past week was a hectic one, I didn't feel tired or terribly thrown off by it getting darker earlier.  Falling back is more appreciated than springing forward time-wise, naturally, but I want to say that both have typically required an adjustment period of some sort.

Not this time.  I rolled with it and have been feeling about as good as I can remember.  Best I can tell, it's because I'm actually getting restful nights of sleep, which didn't happen for most of last year and early stretches this year.  There's no denying that exercise has played a big role in that.

It's funny what we get used to, even those things that aren't beneficial.  After the car accident last year and the eventual physical therapy, I was still locked up some in the neck and upper back.  While I didn't attribute the headaches or restless sleep to that, it seems apparent to me that the tightness in those areas was responsible for such effects.  Having strengthened my shoulders and lower back, those problems have largely dissipated.  My neck will still pop some, but it's nothing like what it was doing earlier this year.  I'm thinking clearer too.

I'm often content to roll with the punches.  How it is is how it is.  While that is a useful way to go about things, especially when you don't feel much in control, I can see that making the necessary adjustments to what is in one's power can lead to improved results.  I'm far from being in perfect condition, but that I'm feeling more like I'm there tells me a lot about where I was.

Monday

-Despite turning the clock forward an hour on Sunday, somehow I woke up before 8 a.m. I don't regularly get up at this time.

-I wrote almost 1800 words in preparation for today's taping. A significant percentage of those words were summarily cut for TV. (The full pieces will hit my other blog, for what it's worth.)

-I wasn't feeling the exercise routine tonight but pushed through it to do 4.5 miles in an hour. Hooray for me.

-With all I accomplished today, I feel like I'm so behind in preparations for getting out of town.

Spring forward

So the clocks jump ahead one hour tonight. Lovely. I did not help my cause by taking a hard, much needed nap this afternoon.

The fine folk at Stanford have some tips for how not to lose sleep during daylight savings time. Knitting is mentioned as a way of getting oneself in a drowsy state if waking up or being awake in the middle of the night is an issue. Hmm. That might actually work.

The 25th hour

Last night or this morning, depending how you want to look at it, clocks fell back one hour. This is the greatest night of the year, especially for the sleep deprived. An extra hour!

The strange thing about this day is that I should be tired earlier in the evening but I'm not. Granted, I slept some this afternoon, but that doesn't necessarily mean I won't be ready to hit the sack when the appropriate hour arrives.

After a week of running hither and yon, it's been strange to have a deliberately uneventful day. The hustle and bustle not only has been quieted but also been replaced with sixty more minutes of inactivity.

My internal clock seems off. No time felt right for anything. For as odd of a day as it has been to experience, it has helped me get some much needed rest. Adjusting to this new rhythm? That will happen soon enough.

The long Sunday

Daylight savings time meant today was for falling back. What a weird day this 25-hour day has been.

It's not that anything exceptional happened. I only got to one of two movies I intended to see, and I had a hard afternoon nap. Other than those non-stories, the biggest development was an unwelcome one.

Last night I noticed--it would have been hard not to--a noise coming from underneath my car's hood. Based on my preliminary assessment of the sound, I thought maybe I needed more power steering fluid. I couldn't tell where the line for full was, but I quickly discovered that I probably exceeded it.

Turning the steering wheel was a workout for awhile. Of course, my car still sounded like a shrieking angel of death. My best--and, let's face it, terribly uninformed--guess is that the serpentine belt is acting up. I just had it replaced at the end of January, so I'm not sure why it's already turned my car into a mobile noise ordinance violation.

The time change means that it gets dark, well, an hour earlier. By 6:30 p.m. it felt like the dead of night. I've slipped into that state where if you removed all timepieces from view, I'd have no idea when it is. While necessary, that nap probably means I've goofed up my sleeping pattern even more.

Thankfully, I did find time to knit for the first time since Thursday. I've finished half of the scarf in progress and shouldn't need more than another hour or so to polish off the first skein. I'd hoped to cast on for a new pair of socks this weekend, but the opportunity didn't present itself. Thanks to LittleWit's persistence at knit night--she gets a gold star for her efforts--the sock that refused to be frogged has finally been unwound, though. Am I courting trouble if I set Thanksgiving as a target date for actually finishing socks from this yarn?