Breakfast with Bwana

BWEST OF BWANA

AN OCCASIONAL BREAKFAST WITH BWANA FEATURE

October 17, 2006

THE WORST DAY OF THE YEAR

We have a head house above the fourth floor of the house – yes, it’s a walk up, but then Victorian townhouses are that way. The heat in the summer time can get fierce up there and fight the air-conditioned space below. Some years ago, I discovered that a simple two-fan air-exchange unit set to “Exhaust” on both sides works as well as a ventilator fan. That double-barreled unit was taken down two weeks or so ago as chilled breezes from the Northwest brought reminders that Canada is our neighbor to the north.

That wasn’t the worst day of the year.

This week and last week, the MLB Championship Series games were twice rained out – those weren’t the worst days of the year.

Today, I stopped at a store and bought Halloween candy – we get about 400 or more kids every Halloween (Tuesday, the 31st of October) coming by the house. The younger kids start off on a march around the Bunker Hill Monument – all led by a bunch of guys in fairy costumes. The Bunker Hill Monument is on Breed’s Hill but that is another story – the Battle of Bunker Hill was fought on Breed’s Hill. For the British troops, that was indeed, one of the worst days of the year.

Halloween is not the worst day of the year, unless it happens to fall on what is the worst day of the year.

Pretty soon, I’ll have to turn on the heat in the house … that means turning on the furnace and setting the thermostats to the winter schedule. This probably should have been done a few days ago, but with bonus days in October, we are being stubborn about accepting the inevitable.

Pretty soon, along will come the day when we have to check the batteries in the smoke detectors. It makes sense to replace them, but we have hard-wired smoke detectors, so this is mostly a mnemonic ritual – some genius at Duracell or Energizer thought it up and should get a bonus. On the other hand, checking the batteries in the thermostats and changing them a week or two after firing up the furnace is a sort of cheat on the inevitable day. But, it does pay homage to the worst day of the year.

Then, down come the storm windows. As I’ve explained before, for the benefit of my friends who live outside the US in milder climes, our regular windows have outer windows to protect them. Well, actually, they provide an added layer of insulation sometimes rendered unnecessary by double glazed thermopane (that may be a brand name) style windows.

That is THE WORST DAY OF THE YEAR – the day on which the storm windows come down!

Not only does it spell the end of any plausible argument that summer is not over, and not only does it spell the end of the golf season save a bonus day here or there, but it actually forces us to give back the hour that we thought we’d stolen from TIME.

Yes, the day that we end Daylight Savings Time and go back one hour is the WORST DAY OF THE YEAR.

Not only do we give back the hour, but inevitably, the declination of the sun steals more and more of each day without so much as an opportunity for declension on our part.

One might suppose that as a corollary, the best day of the year is the first Sunday in April when we Spring forward. Not quite, as the best day is more appropriately measured by the condition of the teeing ground.

But, the first Sunday in April is to be replaced by an earlier Sunday in March as by a stroke of the pen, Congress has changed the dates during which Daylight Savings Time will reign.

The Worst Day Of The Year will, as of next year, be postponed a wee bit, until a Sunday in November, but for now, I must offer this lament as we look forward to darker days ahead – at least until the Winter solstice brings the promise of an ever-lingering twilight hour.

And one additional benefit from the Wizards and Witches who inhabit Congress and pass such laws? Well, the WORST DAY OF THE YEAR will never again fall on Halloween unless … unless they change the law again!

Cheerz…Bwana