I wonder if, on October 31st, 1517, when the monk Martin Luther nailed his 95 points of discussion about the current practices of The Church to that wooden door, effectively beginning The Reformation, he realized that people would one day honor it as the day of the dead?

Well, friendlier to some. Today is the day that you get an extra hour of sleep, as opposed to that nasty bout of it in the Spring where you lose an hour. Then, there are people like me, who are unaffected by the extra hour of sleep and simply find themselves with an extra hour to twiddle their thumbs in the morning while they wait for other people to get their snoring butts out of bed.

But, I digress.

Brenda changed most of the clocks around yesterday while she cleaned house. It made for painful tinkering of the brain cells last night as we tried to figure which time it really was, and which time it would be tomorrow at that time, and when is bedtime again? I have all of one clock downstairs, the alarm clock, which I changed yesterday afternoon before meeting up with Sarah, a longtime friend who I fell out of touch with when I moved to North Carolina some three-and-a-half years ago.

I say that I only have one clock in my subterranean loft (as it were) in jest, naturally. There are also the three attractive "tick tock" clocks that are displayed in a tasteful manner around the area. I love them. I love them so much that I haven't allowed them to work in all the months I've been in Wisconsin, having denied them batteries.

However, as I changed the time on the microwave and used a chair to hoist myself up to a clock situated out of arm's reach (back to the aforementioned extra hour of thumb twiddling), I remembered the package of double-A batteries stashed in my drawer. While I think they really did add a little extra life to my underwear drawer, I remembered with great guilt that they had been purchased for the clocks some months ago. I have behaved selfishly. I'm going to have to think of another way to give my underwear the pizazz it craves, for the day has come for the clocks to tell time.

Plus, I figure the ticking will give me a toe-tapping soundtrack during my moments of sleeplessness—and if you can't be sleeping, toe-tapping is the obvious second choice. I see good things coming my way. Hell, if my clocks work correctly now, life can't be too far behind...right?