Spring Ahead, Fall Back

You're going to read this a lot but here we go, today's the first day of Standard Time in the US.  If you're here, and most of those people who read one of my pages a day are, it's time to set the clock.

Pat, go talk to Mike.  He'll do it for you.  :)

Usually I set my watches when I go to wear one, the PCs and network attached appliances like the Squeezebox set themselves.  I have some old fashioned wind up clocks that I either wait for them to stop, set the time and wind again, or just move the hands back like on my Russian Submarine clock.

At 6am I caught myself staring at the clock radio doing the mental leap and realizing that it was actually 5am.  That did not stop the irrigation system from running, so I decided to take that "gap hour" and lay there listening to the surroundings.  

It proved that I'm in a noisy place.

I noticed that there was the pump running and could hear the hissing from the sprinklers in the front yard, the refrigerator off in the distance was humming, and the dog was snoring as normal but starting to stir. 

After a while of this it got boring.   Time to get up and start on the day early.  I thought that other people would be confused as to when it was, but pets would have their owners up early because the body does take a little time to adjust.   A nation on Jet Lag, if only an hour.

Padding out the front door to the walk, I thought that I should leave the audio book at home and enjoy the quiet since it was still before 6am. 

Wrong.

I forgot that I live almost in the exact center of the great South Florida Sprawl.  Half of the irrigation systems in the neighborhood were running and way off in the distance I could hear the traffic on I-95 heading to Miami or the cities to the North.  Two miles away and I could hear trucks way down in the general noise.  Overhead, at that same time that the Big Rig decided to down shift, a jet passed overhead air braking.   Walking up to Wilton Drive, I noticed that someone had started a compressor that later I found was the beginning of a power washing job.

Mrs Dog and I walked roughly in that direction and the person who does the maintenance of the Shoppes gave me a big smile and a wave and we waved back.  Me my left hand, Mrs Dog her tail.  Smiles all around I got to the drive and noticed one of the officers I know from the Wilton Manors PD.   We waved at each other, most of the officers are quite approachable and friendly while very professional.  He started of in gear shortly after and went off on a call, secondaries kicking in and rumbling the big V8 into the distance.

At that point from the South came another car, this one a beater.  The car was in need of service as it was rumbling down the drive sounding like pieces were about to fall off.

Turning at the next block, it was back into the quiet of the residential neighborhood.  I-95, two miles away was still rumbling, another jet air braked overhead flying into FLL, and a row of homes with sprinklers all irrigating the beginning of the Wet Season away.

Waving to Gina and her two dogs, I got a friendly "Hello!" and I headed on home.

Things were quieter when I was listening to the Audio Book... or at least they seemed so.  Getting the dog out for her walk an hour early was quieter but I didn't realize just how well sounds carried here in the flat lands of South Florida.

It is all part of modern living, you take the good with the bad.  Now, let me turn on the Disco station on the Squeezebox and add a layer of my own to it all.  Ahhh, Much Better!