Daylight Saving Time ends Sunday - change your clocks - change your batteries

Cartoon by Whitney Potter

By Diane Hettrick

Did you forget we were on Daylight Time?

I think many did. I've been getting press releases for months that leave out the D for Daylight when they give the time for events. It doesn't seem to have made a difference locally but might have been a problem for people who were in different time zones to begin with.

So now we get to go through the pain of time change again.

Spring ahead - Fall back.

We set our clocks back one hour before going to bed Saturday, November 6, 2021. The time change happens at 2am on Sunday, November 7, 2021. 

Or maybe it happens at 3am, which becomes 2am.

Back in olden days, before clocks on phones and computers and cable boxes, to find the accurate time you called the Time Lady. There was a special phone number. The female voice would say "At the tone, the time will be ...2:01am .. (beep)" It would be repeated endlessly for every minute of the day.

I once stayed up until 2am to hear what the Time Lady would do about the time change. But she did nothing except move on through the minutes after 2am. I didn't bother to stay up longer but I presume that 2:59am went to 2am.

Washington, Oregon, and California have all passed laws to go permanently onto Daylight Saving Time. We haven't because it takes congressional approval. We could go permanently to Standard Time without congressional approval, but not Daylight Time.

If you didn't know already, on Sunday you will find out which of your timekeeping devices are connected to the internet and which are on their own.

And you'll find out just how many clocks you have in your life.

And speaking of changing things - this is the designated time to change the batteries in your smoke alarms. Even wired in smoke detectors have back up batteries that need to be changed. Carbon monoxide detectors may have batteries too.