... so I really thought I'd be up in New York or Connecticut right now. But our family is still back in Virginia right now. Turns out that Av's ear infection, compounded by the colds the two of us have and the rainy weather and need for sleep has pushed off our trip for at least a day. Probably a good decision, because we would have had to scramble furiously to leave yesterday, and we wouldn't have been very happy. Being very happy is a must when you're driving five hours with a baby.

It also means we may not get to see Grandpa Lou after all, who is pretty weak from his chemo treatments. But hey -- what good would it do for us to see him while we're sick and everything? Since my last posting about him, where he appeared to bend over backwards to have us stay with him, he decided to call my father immediately to relay the message that he couldn't possibly have us because he was too weak, and that he could only see us for an hour. Sadly, that's the state of bullshit family politics on my Dad's side. We'll see what happens...

And now I'm home, having woken up at 5:15 AM, Eastern Daylight Time, by our screaming kid -- who woke up my wife around 4:00. Usually he sleeps just fine through the night. We tried to see if he was thirsty, needed to be changed, etc... but I think he just wanted to be hugged and rocked back to sleep. That is, until he woke up again.

The thing is, though -- this is the day which we set our clocks ahead. We lose an hour of sleep, theoretically. So the fact that he chose this night to not sleep through the night shortchanges things greatly. It's as if I've woken up at 4:15 instead of 5:15. And now that I'm up, I need to change the remaining clocks in the house, don't I? (K did this for the clocks upstairs when she woke up to be with Av earlier). America* sleeps soundly at this hour on the most part due to that hour they'll be missing of sleep.

*America, in this case refers to most of North America, which changes its clocks today. The notable exceptions in the US are most of Indiana and all of Arizona. Canada has its exceptions as well in a lot of Saskatchewan, some of Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, and Nunavut. I'm deliberately not including Newfoundland, which has its own time zone which is 90 minutes ahead of what I'm in right now; they're on their own...

Daylight Savings time has often been a drag in April. October, at least, is comforting enough to allow you to think Hey! Another hour of sleep! Bonus... but April doesn't afford us this perk.

I'm including a good solution to the whole April Daylight Savings Time issue. Source: http://www.timechange.com/dls/dls2.html