Taking Advantage of Daylight Saving Time

4 days to go until my birthday and I’ve already started to receive presents.  On Wednesday, I received a collection the first 48 issues of The Walking Dead from my fellow pop cultural blogger, Arleigh Sandoc.  Arleigh is the owner of Through The Shattered Lens, a wonderful entertainment site that he graciously allows me to write for.

And then today, I found out I was getting another gift this Sunday.  In fact, I’m getting a gift that I’ve always wanted but I always figured there was no realistic way I’d ever receive it. 

I’m getting more time.

A whole extra hour of it, apparently.

Yes, as I was informed at work earlier today, this Sunday is Daylight Saving Time. 

I’m going to be honest.  I usually hate Daylight Saving Time.  First off, speaking as someone with ADD (yes, I know — who doesn’t have ADD nowadays?  Still, my ADD is worse than yours), it’s difficult enough for me to deal with time without having the hours just randomly change in the middle of the night.  Secondly, speaking as someone with OCD, Daylight Saving Time means that I’m going to have to reset every single clock I own immediately after 2:00 a.m. (or 3:00 a.m. or whatever time it’s going to be — see, it’s started!) or else I’m not going to be able to sleep.  Finally, speaking as someone who might be a hoarder, I own a lot of clocks.

Yes, Daylight Saving Time is a massive pain in the ass and I have yet to find anyone who disagrees with me on this.  What exactly is the point of it all?  According to Wikipedia, Daylight Saving Time has something to do with farming.  I guess I could read the article further to find out just what exactly that is but, to be honest, the article bores me.  If anything, this whole farming thing sounds like an excuse.  Trust me, I’m a country girl and I can tell you this — it doesn’t matter what time the clock says, roosters are going to crow whenever they feel like it, cows are going to smell terrible, and hay is always going to make me reach for my inhaler.

My personal theory is that Daylight Saving Time is meant to serve as a reminder that our time here on this planet is short and that the hours we take for granted can just mysteriously vanish (or reappear) in the middle of the night.  And, honestly, who wants to be reminded of that?  That’s depressing.

Still, I am liking the idea of getting an extra hour. After all, how many times a year do you get to spend an hour in a state of suspended limbo?  It’s almost like one of those movies where the hero goes back in the past to correct his mistakes.

Here’s my idea of the perfect way to celebrate Daylight Saving Time.  Do whatever you need to do from 2:00 a.m to 3:00 am.  Then, when that extra hour kicks in, do the exact opposite.  See which hour goes better for you and use that hour as a template for the rest of your life.

A Few (Very) Random Facts About Me

1) I love musicals.  I was in the drama club all through high school.  When I was in college, I was active in community theater.  I’ve never allowed the fact that I’m tone-deaf to prevent me from breaking out into a song.  Taking all that into account, I really should love Glee.  And yet, I don’t.  In fact, I hate it.  Whether it’s Matthew Morrison’s creepy smile or the way Glee pretends to be more quirky than it actually is, the show just annoys the Hell out of me. 

2) When it comes to selecting a favorite color, I’ve always been torn between red or green.  I finally settled on one of them about two nights ago but, for the life of me, I can’t remember which one.

3) I am a German-Spanish-Irish-Italian mutt with a little French thrown in for good measure.  I probably identify most with my Irish heritage even though I’m definitely closest to the Spanish-Italian side of my family.  A part of me wishes that my background was 100% Cajun. 

4) I have a degree in Art History so, of course, I’m currently working as a receptionist.

5) Along with being asthmatic, I suffer from heterochromia, i.e. my left eye is a lighter shade of green than my right.  Unlike asthma, heterochromia is actually kinda cool. 

6) I tend to talk a lot.  I mean a lot.  My sister Megan once said, “Lisa can tell the longest stories about nothing…”  At the time, it actually hurt my feelings but in retrospect, she’s right.  What people often fail to understand, though, is that the main reason I won’t shut up is because I’m actually very shy.  Rambling is my way of avoiding the dreaded awkward silence.

7) For close to a year now, I’ve been writing — off-and-on — a novel called Mizmoon.  It’s been one of the most frustrating and rewarding experiences of my life.  My plan is to have a rough draft completed by the end of 2010. 

8 ) If I had a time machine, I’d go back 11 years and tell my younger self to “wait” and enjoy being innocent for a few more years.  What’s sad is that I know my younger self would probably respond by telling me that I don’t understand how she (I) feels and that it’s her (my) life anyway. 

9) Often times, when I’m having trouble finding any inspiration for a more substantial blog post, I’ll handle the situation by writing down a few very random facts about me.

10) I’m not anti-marriage.  I just have serious doubts as to whether or not I could ever be a part of a succesful marriage.  I’m a romantic at heart but, at the same time, I hate the thought of one day waking up and realizing that I’ve sacrificed my own identity just to be “so-and-so’s wife.”  A friend of mine recently told me that “a succesful relationship is built on trust.”  I don’t know if I’ll ever be capable of trusting anyone that much.

11) I’ve often been accused of engaging in a bit too much TMI for my own good (especially when it comes to my twitter account) but there are certain things in my life that I don’t talk about even though I want to.  But I don’t because I know that if I do, people will no longer think of me as Lisa Marie.  Instead, they’ll simply see me as an object of pity or as a victim.  As much as I sometimes need to express my pain, I don’t want it to define me.

12) At the same time, I do find that it is sometimes to helpful to vent (or sometimes even cry out) on a site like twitter because 1) you can block anyone who acts like an asshole about it, 2) others can block or ignore you if they don’t want to hear about it (which makes me feel less guilty about my occasional emo moments), and 3) sometimes, if you’re lucky, someone will actually offer up either some good advice or come up with a response so perfectly absurd that it’ll snap me out of my angst.

13) Yes, I have in the past occasionally posted a risqué picture or two on twitpic, tweetphoto, and plixi.  And yes, I have occasionally had to deal with the total stranger who has taken it upon him or herself to tell me that I need to have more “respect” for myself or use better judgment.  But you know what?  It’s my body and I’m not ashamed of it.  Why is it that society continues to insist that a woman cannot be independent, intelligent, and/or liberated unless she’s also some sort of humorless, sexless celibate?

If I want to show off my body, I will.  Even more importantly, though, if I don’t feel like showing off my body, I won’t.  No matter how many DMs, YMs, and e-mails I get asking me when I’m going to post another “thong shot.”  The minute anything starts to feel like an obligation is the minute that I start to lose interest.

Someone once asked me how I’d feel if, some day in the distant future, I discovered that my daughter was posting racy pictures of herself on the Internet.  I didn’t have an answer for him then and I really don’t have an answer now.  I know it would upset me but I would also hope that if my daughter was doing that, she would be doing it because she wanted to and not because she felt like she had to.

14) Yes, I do want to be a mom someday.  If I have a girl, I’m going to name her Gloria Elena after my mom.

15) When I first started this post, I thought it was going to be a lot shorter and a lot less serious.  🙂

16) I am an obsessive list maker.  Not only do I continually make lists of everything I need to during the day but I tend to hold on to the lists even after the day has passed because the list, if nothing else, will at least help me remember the day.  Yes, I know this is probably an indication of a tendency towards hoarding.  However, I am capable of throwing aways my old lists … just as long as I’m given one last chance to read them before I do so.

17) Continuing on the obsessive compulsive theme, it’s very important to me that any numbers in my life be even numbers.  I can never, for instance, feel secure if I’m in a building that has an address that ends in an odd number.  That’s also why I’m going to end up listing 20 random facts about myself in this post.  (It’s also why, for my Lisa Marie’s Favorite Exploitation and Grindhouse Trailers series over at Through the Shattered Lens, I always include 6 trailers per post instead of 5.)

18) I used to love that Chanel commercial where Nicole Kidman was the actress having the romance with the — well, I forget what he was supposed to be but he was hot and that’s all that really mattered.  Except, for some reason, I always thought that Kidman’s character was supposed to be terminally ill and dying in the commercial.

19) I love old school Italian horror films, the gorier and more sordid the better.  Yet, in real life, I can’t stand the sight of blood.

20) Okay, one last random fact.  Hmmm…alright, I get about two to three hours of sleep a night and I like it that way.  Life fascinates me and I can’t experience it if I’m asleep.