Hi there, Dear Reader. It’s mid-afternoon here in Lithia, Florida, on Sunday, March 13, 2022. It is a cold-for-Florida spring day in the Tampa Bay area. Currently, the temperature is 66˚F (19˚C) under sunny skies. With humidity at 47% and the wind blowing from the northeast at 9 MPH (14 KM/H), the feels-like temperature is 66˚F (19˚C). Today’s forecast calls for sunny skies and a high of 70˚F (21˚C). Tonight, skies will be partly cloudy. The low will be 51˚F (11˚C).
Today – at 2 AM Eastern – we shifted from Eastern Standard Time to Eastern Daylight Time. We had to “spring forward” or adjust our clocks by skipping one hour ahead of whatever time it was in our time zone. As a result, we lost an hour’s worth of sleep. Now, of course, I feel (like everyone else) that “jet lagged” feeling that comes from time shifts.
I’ve lived most of my life in one time zone: the Eastern Time Zone. My hometown of Miami, my “adopted hometown” of Bogota, Colombia, and the Tampa Bay area are in the same zone, so even during the six-year-long period when Mom, my older half-sister Vicky, and I lived in Bogota, the time zone never changed.
In my 59 years on Earth, I’ve only experienced real jet lag – that is, jet lag caused by flying to a country or city that is in another time zone – three times.
- In the summer of 1985, my late mother and I stayed at a family friend’s house in De Pere, WI for almost two weeks. De Pere (a suburb of Green Bay) is in the Central Time Zone, one hour behind Eastern
- In the fall of 1988, I spent 88 days in Sevilla (Seville), Spain during my Semester in Spain study-abroad stint. Sevilla is in the Central European Standard Time (CEST) zone, which is one hour ahead of the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT or Zulu) zone and five hours ahead of Eastern
- In February of 2000, I flew to Colorado to meet (and have a four-day-long tryst with) a cute woman I met in a Yahoo! Chat room a few months before. Denver is in the Mountain time zone, which is two hours behind Eastern
Of course, the most severe case of jet lag I experienced was when I made the round trip to Spain from Miami in September of ’88. It took me about a week to get my body clock coordinated with Central European Standard Time. Until that happened, though, I felt tired, out of sorts, and as though I was in a dream of some kind. Add to that the feeling of Oh, boy, I’m in Europe and you’ll understand why I had to fight the urge to pinch myself to check if I wasn’t just having a hyper-realistic dream.
The return trip, which took place on December 18, 1988, was just as bad. The flight to Miami was a mostly-by-day trip; I left Seville at 7:30 AM CEST (2:30 AM Eastern), landed at Madrid’s Barajas (now Adolfo Suarez) International Airport before 9 AM, and was bound for Miami at 10:00 AM CEST (5 AM EST) and landed 9 hours and 45 minutes later (7:45 PM CEST/2:45 PM EST). By the time I arrived at the house that I shared with my mother at the time, it was only 3:30 or 4 in the afternoon, but for me, it was close to my Sevilla dinner time.
My other two out-of-my-time-zone trips weren’t as tiring or disorienting. The Wisconsin trip in 1985 was more stressful because it involved catching a connecting flight in Detroit; the Colorado trip involved a two-hour difference and therefore a bit more “jet lag” effects, but since my “friend” showed up at Denver International Airport and – to put it mildly – we got along well during our brief time together, whatever discomfort or stress that I felt then was eclipsed by the bliss of intimacy.
I hate having to “spring forward” and “fall back,” though. The first day is discombobulating, and I feel both tired and cross whenever we must shift from Standard to Daylight Savings and back. My position – and I know I am not alone in this – is, “Congress should choose to make one – and only one – time standard. I don’t care if it’s Daylight Savings or Standard. Just choose one already and stick to it!”
In other news:
Today I checked on my three West Side Story Blu-ray orders to see if they’ve shipped and when I can expect them to arrive in Lithia. Per the various stores that I ordered the home media release of Steven Spielberg’s reimagined film adaptation of the 1957 Broadway musical, here’s where we stand:
- Target shipped its retailer-exclusive Art set from a warehouse in Savage, Maryland to a UPS facility in Bridgeport, New Jersey at 6:30 PM on Friday, March 11. It arrived at its destination 29 minutes and was processed for shipping (via ground, by the looks of it) to Lithia. The last time my package was scanned was at 4:37 AM yesterday, when it left Bridgeport’s UPS facility. Its current ETA is Thursday, March 17
- Best Buy says my Steelbook edition is being packaged for shipment and has the most optimistic delivery ETA: Tuesday, March 15
- Amazon is vague about my order of the Collector’s Edition set. There, the only information I have is a Thursday, March 17 delivery date
Other than that, Dear Reader, I can only say that I’m tired, cross, and that I almost did not write this blog post. I considered taking the day off from blogging, but since I don’t really do anything here – I can’t even cook my own breakfast (which is another reason why I am in a bad mood) anymore cos we have a gas stove – I decided to be a trouper and carry on with A Certain Point of View, Too.
And on this discordant note, I’ll sign off. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.
A Certain Point of View, Too 
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