HikeArizona.COM

I forgot that the part of the state I live in stupidly observes the barbaric ritual of changing their clocks arbitrarily twice a year. It's really telling about the Navajo, that they do not want to be part of Arizona, when they observe this ritual. Next weekend they jump 1 hour ahead of the state. They justify it by saying they have territory in Utah and New Mexico, but why not be in Arizona and allow those sections to choose to observe it or make them not observe it, and keep the dominant part of the Reservation in line with the rest of the state by NOT observing it. Best thing about the last 5 1/2 years (except for October of last year and the first week of November), was not having to deal with DST.

Pick one and stick with it, I always say.
:SB:

@Jim_H
I almost missed the orientation for keet seel when I did that hike several years ago. I was living in Oregon and came back to visit and didn't take the time difference into account. I'm off 'til May, but when I go back to work I'll be half the month 2 hours ahead in central time which means getting up 3am Az. time 14 days every month. :-({|=

At least you are not in the state. It's bizarre this area jumps ahead for 7 months of the year. Most people don't know that Arizona State Laws don't apply out here, and a lot of Federal ones don't seem to, either. I do miss living in Arizona.

I haven't lived in a state that observed DST since leaving California back in '78. Hawaii is another state that doesn't do the time switch. I agree it can be annoying, depending upon where you live. It might be pretty nice to have up in the Northwest, where it stays light very late during the summer, and you can do your gardening after work. At least, that's what people tell me who have lived up there. They suffer in the dark for so many months, after all, so it's a sort of compensation.

Just being the Pollyanna here. ;)

I don't mind DST, but I would prefer it to be in effect year-round. There are only a couple months in which I leave work when there's any daylight left.

Jim_H wrote:barbaric ritual

Tell us how you really feel about this.

chumley wrote:

Jim_H wrote:barbaric ritual

Tell us how you really feel about this.

Well, if you would like, I could send a PM with an update on my incredible disdain for Kayenta, the Colorado Plataea, alcoholics, and my 32 years of poor and stupid life choices, and so on, but I am guessing you aren't interested. That is why I kept it to my feelings on DST alone, which I am really irritated to learn I will have to deal with when I get back next week from Tucson. If only I didn't have to come back. Well, that can add a few ticks to the poor life choices column.

I think they should add an hour every day sometime between 12 midnight and 4 AM and then take an hour away sometime between 12 noon and 4 PM! ;)

@Jim_H

Don't worry Jim, I'm not too far behind you with poor life choices amounting to 26 years and counting.

Misery loves company.

Watch out there Jake, you get to where I am, and even what you thought would be smart choices based on what other seemingly informed and intelligent people said was a good Idea turn out to be bad, and you end up questioning every decision you make, from what to watch on TV, to whether or not you should eat diner tonight. I don't even know if I should go buy bananas and milk or just stare at the screen all day. It's a tough call, with long lasting repercussions.

You guys are pretty young. How about my situation? I'm having the time of my life right now, studying in Costa Rica, courtesy of the US and AZ taxpayers (student loans, Pell grant, University grants, etc.) and I get along great with college students, but I will go home to face a job market that is hostile, prejudicial and bigoted toward people my age. Graduating from NAU this coming May, at the age of 59. I could give 10 years to an organization, which is about as long as most people work at any given job site, but who will hire me?

However, I prefer to think positive. When I realized a few years ago that I will probably never be able to afford to retire, I decided to have an interesting life, instead of clinging to a rut that was boring and led nowhere. Hope to find an interesting job, at least. I may have to move back to Costa Rica to make that happen. Also thinking about grad school. It would keep me busy, anyway. I am not too excited about going back to work.

If you rely on work, or a job, or a career to give your life meaning and happiness, you will end up empty, dissatisfied, angry and broken. The modern industrial world is about consuming, be it stuff you buy, or people as employees by employers. In the end, the goal is nothing more than to extract that which can be, to chew you up, and spit you out like a dried up husk. Jobs are, at worst, the torture you go through to do what should be your life, and at best the tolerable existence you put up with to do your life. The only real good is the pay check, everything else related to the job is a peripheral element of the machine, and should be considered suspect at all times. Money is good, but only to a point, as it won't buy satisfaction for the relatively limited amount of time we get. If anything, most seem content to squander it on useless things that only lead to wanting more of the poison. Only if you had gobs and gobs of it might you be able to afford a capricious lifestyle and do whatever you choose, from buying a house simply to blow it up, to driving your Ferrari into a hotel, only to buy the hotel and tear it down and build a monstrosity to your own ego, a modern megalith of self-indulgence, with no utility or rationality. A colossal concrete statue of yourself, 300 meters high, with a crypt at it's base to house your inevitable remains, while an idealized mass of your self stands high above it for the ages to proclaim to the masses that your were there, and you were a dominant force in a land unmasterfully dominated by other half conscious simians, to hope someday, a thousand years from now, that one out of the many, many unintelligent drones might gaze up at the the abomination that you gave birth to and remember that you once existed, and think to themselves, was that person worth remembering, were they something that I should ponder, or were they merely the ultimate manifestation of a time long since past, a time of spectacular decadence, when mere ordinary men could build a bizarre memorial to themselves in the hopes that immortality could be achieved through remembrance, rather than through the hope of some misguided ideology.

If I were you, and if you like what you are doing, I would just keep on keeping on, "steady as she goes Mr. Moe", and ride the wave until she breaks on the jetty. With any luck you'll catch another one, but don't do what everyone else tells you and put a job, or a career first. I can't wait to get away from here, and do not care to even have a job when I do. If I do, great, if not, oh well. 10% of the country can't find one, thanks to our greed from the last 10 to 30 years, so who really cares? Besides, there is always food available somewhere, and day labor, too, if you want it.

Well, said. Jim, you've met Matt. He manages to get by on very little, lives very cheaply, doesn't ask for much, seems happy in his tipi in Oregon. I don't think he gets a lot of respect for it, though. I think people want him to suffer and slave in a job, just like most of us do.

Student loans would buy me more time in college, which I would probably enjoy. The problem then is paying back the loans. If you earn less than $20,000 a year (not hard for me to do ;) ) you pay $0 to $46 per month on the sliding scale. At least, that's what I'm told. There are possibilities, of course, for teaching assistantships, and fee waivers.

There are some people who are lucky enough to get up in the morning and love to go to work. And that's fortunate for them to have found a career they enjoy. I don't see anything wrong with that, but I think it is kind of rare. But there are more people in the world than there are jobs with the potential to be enjoyed. Most jobs are tedious and life-draining, and so full of back-stabbing and gossip that they become unbearable and all I can think of is immediate flight, as far away as I can get.

Work, it seems, is the essence of DST.

"I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that." - John Cusack as Lloyd Dobler in "Say Anything".

I absolutely love that. Don't you hate it when one of your friends suddenly gets into Amway or Herbalife or becomes a hack "financial advisor" and starts trying to sell you something? The catch phrase is: "I just found out about this great way to make money, and I want you to come to a meeting at my house about it tonight at 7." I tell them, if I wanted vitamins, I'd go to the store. Have you further noticed that within a very short time they somehow have stopped mentioning that scheme? And they hope you forget that they made such fools of themselves?

Oh, the weather. This is about the weather. Today in Puntarenas it is hot and sunny, with a pleasant fresh breeze coming off the ocean, and the water temperature is about 85 degrees. I think I will go back to the beach now.

Well, I realized today that 2012's Daylight Savings Time will end tonight/ tomorrow. New Mexico will rejoin Arizona in normal time, or will Arizona rejoin the rest of Mountain Time? I guess we go back to DST in early March, so we have a little over 4 months together.

That's good to know. I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere yet.

DST has always been an enormous PITA......I never knew what time it was that first weekend in November or that last weekend in April. Arizona and Hawaii are the only states that DON'T observe it...go figure. And they moved it from Oct to Nov.

I lived in Ca. for 13 years and I never got used to DST. The whole thing makes absolutely no sense to me. Glad to be back in my state which knows better than to try to change the space/time continuum.