Daylight Savings

Fall backs. I can never seem to get them right.

This year I was too prepared. I fell back a day early. I woke up Saturday morning with what I thought was an extra hour to get to the bank. This was the most important thing I had to do all day as I had no money stemming from last week’s mugging incident. Upon arrival at the bank the security guard informed me that it wasn’t 11:05am, it was actually Noon:05. She was not responsive to my daylight savings confusion story, nor was she sympathetic to my mugging story. “Thanks a lot. I guess I’ll just come back tomorrow,” I said facetiously. “Banks are closed on Sundays, sweetheart,” she said, seemingly unaware of my sarcasm.

The day was supposed to be the day I sent out my law school applications. Without any way to pay the United States Postal Service, I seized the opportunity to tweak my application essays a little bit more. I toyed with the idea of rewriting the opening paragraph about the first time I ever used the Internet:

“The first time I ever used the Internet, I entered a chat room and pretended I was celebrity teen heartthrob Jonathan Taylor Thomas. This was 1994. I was only 12 years old, very awkward, and nearly a decade away from attending law school and learning the meaning of identity theft. I learned an important lesson that day: technology can be used for good or evil.”

Obviously, I’m not using that opening. Mostly because I doubt admissions officials would understand the gratuitous JTT reference. I am, however, writing about the intersection between democracy and technology. I’m sending the applications out on Halloween. Trick or treat.

Hopefully, I’ve used up all my bad luck this week. After the mugging and my failure to grasp an understanding of daylight savings, I had another mishap on the way out to a Halloween party last night. Dressed as a fortune cookie (wearing all khaki, a white t-shirt, and a clear plastic poncho) I somehow locked myself between my apartment and the outside door. You see, there’s two doors. It’s a basement apartment. The interior door locks without a key and leads to the garbage room. The exterior door requires a key. I left my keys on the counter in the rush to get to the Halloween party. So, I was stuck in the tiny garbage room for a while dressed in costume. Luckily, my friend gave me a dart board for my birthday, so I competed against myself. Team 1 aka “Owner of a Lonely Dart”, was beating Team 2 aka “Dart Bored” when I heard footsteps upstairs. I pounded relentlessly on the ceiling/floorboards until my upstairs neighbor came downstairs and unlocked the garbage room. He was a bit surprised to discover a fortune cookie.

And that is how I spent my extra hour last night.

Click for my collection of fortunes. My personal favorite: “Maybe you can live on the moon in next century.”