Time keeps ticking away
Friday, March 9, 2007
Jeff Kohl is a baseball fanatic. And a stickler for time.So the owner of the diamond gallery on North Seminary Street that bears his name said he was excited by the prospect of daylight-saving time.
"It doesn't get dark so early," Kohl said Thursday afternoon. "That means the sun stays up longer and we get more daylight in the evenings. That means more baseball."
But Kohl forgot one small detail.
"Wait, when do we move the clocks up this year?" Kohl asked.
When he learned daylight-saving time has been moved up three weeks and starts at 2 a.m. Sunday morning, he groaned.
Then he laughed.
"I forgot they moved it up," Kohl said. "That means I'll be setting watches and clocks first thing Monday morning. That'll take forever."
Kohl's Diamond Gallery offers a selection of close to 200 watches and a couple dozen clocks.
"That's the way I like, though," Kohl said. "If someone comes in to look at a watch, I want it to have the right time. We always set the clocks and watches correctly here. People want to know they work when they buy them."
Then he remembered one small detail.
"You know, I'm a pretty good at delegating things," Kohl said. "I'll just have Mike and Ashley do the watch setting Monday morning."
Kohl wasn't the only one looking forward to springing ahead. Losing one hour doesn't bother many folks.
The afternoon wait staff at Sirloin Stockade on North Henderson Street warmed to the subject.
"I like it because my husband works construction and when we move forward he doesn't have to work in the dark at 5 or 6 in the evening," Terri Riddell said. "And I like the fact that when I leave here and drive home at 4:30 or 5:30 in the evening there is still a few hours of daylight left.
"Winters are tough sometimes. It's cold and the weather gets bad. The darkness just seems to make it worse."
Kelly McKinzie agreed with her co-worker.
"I hate moving the clocks back," McKinzie said. "I got to the point where I wouldn't do it. I love daylight-savings time. I love having the extra hour or so of light in the evening."
Then McKinzie was reminded daylight-saving time starts early this year.
"It starts this weekend?" she asked. "I work here Saturday night until 11 and then I have to be in Sunday morning at 6:30.
"That'll feel like 5:30. Oh well, it will be worth it in the long run."
There was one dissenting voice in the gaggle of move-the-clocks-ahead supporters.
Rick Lotz is a technician at Trilutions Computer and Internet Center on North Henderson Street.
"I don't like daylight-savings time," he said. "It's silly to have it nine months out of the year. I like the sun to be in the south by noon.
"That's how time has been measured since we started measuring it."
Lotz dismissed most of people's technology worries.
"There will not be major problems for the majority of people with home computers," Lotz said. "Business that rely on computers to do certain tasks - like unlocking doors at a certain time - will have to deal with it.
"But for the majority of people, the time change won't be a big deal."
Lotz and his co-workers pointed to the fluid nature of time.
"You could go up and down Henderson Street and no one would have the exact same time," said a Stephen Colbert look-a-like who wanted to remain anonymous.
A number of folks in the office checked their timepieces. One watch said 10:41 a.m. Another had 10:40. The clock on the wall read 10:44.
"See what I mean?" the Colbert clone joked. "Half of the people worried about their clocks are the same people who leave the clock on their VCR blinking at 12:00.
"Our measure of time is never exact."
That might be a comforting thought to the people Jeff Kohl tasks with resetting all the watches and clocks in his jewelry store.
Tom Loewy is a columnist and reporter for The Register-Mail. Contact him with column ideas at tloewy@register-mail.com or 343-7181, Ext. 256.
