Daylight Savings Blog.

It’s cold out there. Colder than April ought to be, even in the North. But I will look at the bright side. Now we have an extra hour of sunlight in the afternoon to enjoy the subarctic chills!

Japan does not monkey with its clocks twice a year, as most of the rest of the industrialized world does. As far as I can tell, the reason for that is, “Japan has never done that.” The result was some very early sunrises in summer. My apartment in Osaka — which is roughly same latitude as Atlanta — had no air conditioning, and so some mornings I awoke sweating after a 4 a.m. to 5 a.m. sunrise.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, in terms of seasons. It’s (nearly) Spring here in the Northern Hemisphere, and a (middle-aged) man’s fancy turns to… federal income taxes. I sat down this afternoon and did a dry run of this year’s 1040. Meaning I filled out one of the copies in pencil. No surprises this year, as far as I can tell. I managed to avoid giving the government an interest-free loan again. But barely: the amount I will owe come April 15 is fairly small. That’s all good news. The bad news, the reason for the small amount is that my free-lance writing business slacked off in 2002, so I didn’t make as much.

I see that Presidential Election Campaign box is still there, right under the address label, where it’s been for many years. That seems like a relic of the ’70s to me. We need something more attuned to our times: “Do you, or your spouse, want $3 to go to a fund to blow up more Saracens? Yes _ No _.”

Today I took Lilly to a friend’s birthday party at an enormous house in Oak Brook, a town where large dwellings are the norm. The party started at 2:30, according to the invitation, “with a clown from 3-4.” I dropped Lilly off at about 2:45, and as I was driving away, I spotted some clown driving toward the house. Literally. She (as Lilly later called her) was driving in full clown makeup, as I suppose she would have to, but it made me wonder of the Oak Brook police do clown profiling. Of course they would deny it: “The OBPD does not stop clown cars, unless they are driving like clowns.”

Anyway, Lilly may get a birthday party when she turns 6. But I plan to deprive her of a clown. If she doesn’t like that, she will have to sue me when she comes of age. I don’t hate clowns, exactly, but I don’t want one in my house either. Call me prejudiced.