While eating my eggs and bacon this morning, I checked out my Facebook news feed. Much to my surprise, my northern friends are posting pictures of snow! What – It’s the end of March! Old man winter, it’s time to leave already.
There was one set of photos that seemed right. My Northern Florida friends and family were posting pictures of hail. In Florida that is a sign that spring and summer are here. One of my cousins’ yards was covered with two inches of hail. Rain is forecast here today and then more on Tuesday and Wednesday. I think it is time for that yellow stuff I wrote about last week to wash away. Trust me, I’m good with that.
I’m ready to give up the jackets and start donning Ban-Lons and Ray Bans. This is a dangerous time for jackets anyway. I am prone to leaving them behind somewhere when the mornings are chilly and the middays are sunny and warmer. In the past three years, I’ve left a jacket in a restaurant and a radio station. I didn’t realize that I had left the one in the restaurant until the next day. I never saw that one again. I was luckier with the one I left in the radio station. I was able to get it back along with a ton of razing the next day. I’m not sure which was worse.
It’s gotten so bad that when I wear a jacket to work or the radio station, I leave it folded across my computer bag; saves me from having to shop for new jackets all the time. I remember tying the sleeves of my jackets around my waist during my high school and college days just to keep track of them. That seems to be a lost practice these days; I rarely that done on campus. The guys would rather freeze than wear jackets in the first place and the gals don’t want to hide their leggings.
Working the “All Night Satellite” at WCOS was easier to manage because it was cold going into work at midnight and colder leaving at dawn. So my jacket would hang on the coat rack at the back of the studio while I was working. Coat management during my Nightbeat Show days was more of a challenge. I would arrive at the station a little after four in the afternoon to record the commercials that were scheduled. When I thought about it, I would leave my jacket in my car. On really cold evenings I would wear it into the booth at Doug Broome’s and leave it in the cardboard box where I carried the records, and stuff. The problem was mild evenings. I would often leave my jacket in the car and then freeze when I left the booth to drive back to the station. Fortunately I parked directly behind the broadcast booth so the discomfort was short lived.
So, this week’s rains should take care of the coating of yellow pollen that covers our cars, sidewalks and just about everything else in sight. Blooming season is here and vivid color is popping out everywhere. This is good news except for one thing; Bradford Pears. Someone must have thought it would be a good joke when they imported them from China and Vietnam. After years of being told that they are great to plant because they are hearty and love the climate here, we are now being told that they are an invasive species like Kudzu and that we should cut them all down. Come to think of it, Kudzu, a vine native in much of eastern Asia, Southeast Asia, and some Pacific islands was imported to provide erosion control for the beds of railroad tracks and overpasses. Now it threatens to cover the entire southern landscape.
I’ve always thought that if someone wanted to make a movie about the post- apocalyptic south, it would not contain images of bombed out cities and crumbling highways, it would contain a never ending sea of Kudzu and Bartlett Pears. Yeah! There would definitely be stinky Bartlett Pears. That would be the hardship that the survivors would be facing while wearing polyester clothes. You can’t destroy polyester either.
The other thing that happens this weekend is that the UK and Europe make their change to Daylight Saving Time. The rift in the space-time continuum has been healed, at least until November.
That brings up a small rant that I want to get out of my system. Several states, including South Carolina are considering unilaterally changing to Daylight Time year round. I think doing it unilaterally is a terrible idea. The country needs to do it as a whole or not. We have two states Hawaii and Arizona that are on standard time year round they never change. Can you imagine the confusion that would ensue if other states went to daylight time year round? You would have some states on standard time, some switching back and forth and some on daylight time. As it is, I have to figure out what time it is in Arizona when I call my brother. If this happens, you would need some sort of app to figure out what the local time is for all the participants in other states when you schedule an interstate conference call. I’ve missed business calls and even a flight partly because Indiana did not observe DST until 2006. Indiana finally wised up. Before 2006, most of Indiana did not observe Daylight Saving Time. However, some counties decided to use DST, creating confusion about what time it was around spring and fall. To avoid the confusion, Indiana passed a bill in 2005 ensuring that the entire state would use DST from April 2006, regardless of the time zone. If the country goes helter-skelter the way Indiana used to be it would be bedlam.
So before I hurt myself thinking more about all this, I’ll just goodbye for now and hope you have a great week watching all the pretty flowers bloom. Oh MY!
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