summer smells
With the title of this post I refer not to the delightful aromas of the year's finest season, but to the fact that summer makes things smell bad. Really! Beyond the fact that you actually can smell things in summer--unlike in the winter, when all the odors are frozen--the heat and humidity stimulates everything disgusting and malodorous to step up production a tremendous amount. Case in point: our clothes drier stopped working for some reason (reason hopefully to be determined and remedied soon) and the clothes that were supposed to be drying in it sat in their own moisture for some hours before I noticed the trouble. Even though I then hung them outside, where they dried in a reasonable time, the damage had already been done: a distict mildewy odor now attends the entire load, which rather defeats the purpose of washing in the first place (side note: we rarely think of it, but us boys at least wash our clothes for the purpose of odor removal rather than visual cleaning).
I won't even mention bread mold or skunk cabbage, or actual skunks, for that matter. When was the last time you got sprayed by a skunk in the winter?!
That is why I oppose, and violently, the proposal as related to me on Slashdot to extend Daylight Savings Time for three more months or something. The last thing we need is more summer! Oh wait, that's not right. It may sound silly, though, but the demand is there: folks figure that changing the clocks will actually effect how much daylight there is. Wouldn't it make more sense to change the hours that companies operate, if they don't like the amount of sunlight where (when?) they're doing business now? Although I guess it's all arbitrary anyways.
What it all does demonstrate, though, is that we're all doing things later than they used to. If the plan goes through it won't be light until after eight in the morning in November, but nobody'll mind because who gets up before 8:00 anyways?! All the action happens in the evening. Next thing you know noon'll be at 3:00 PM to make the bar-hopping easier on those cold winter evenings.