[The scene: a suburban home situated somewhere in the (US) Eastern time zone. It is a mild, sunny Sunday afternoon in mid-March, and He and She are seated at their respective computers on opposite sides of a low wall, enjoying the sunshine when they remember to look out a window.]
She: [From her side of wall.] John?
He: Hmm?
She: What do you think about dinner tonight? Feel like grilling something?
He: Hmm? Oh, sure, yeah. What you have in mind?
She: I don’t know. Let me think about it.
He: Okay, let me know. I’ve gotta return the movies and pick up some other groceries, so I can grab something to grill, too.
[Time passes.]
She: What time is it?
[He consults his watch.]
He: A little before 2.
She: But… Oh, that’s right — I must’ve never adjusted this clock over here the last time we changed. Did you remember to change your alarm clock last night?
He: Yeah.
She: Good.
[Time passes. At various times, one or the other of them goes downstairs, heats up water for another cup of coffee or tea, messes with dog for a few minutes, and returns to his or her computer. Silence for a while, and then...:]
She: Omigod, look at the time! Weren’t you going to go to the store?
He: C’mon for crissake, will you relax, it’s only quarter to five!
She: Then how come my computer’s time says quarter to six?!?
He: [Frowning and rolling eyes, safely on his side of the wall.] Oh, for… don’t you see? It’s stupid damn Windows! If you’d let me switch you to Linux like I—
[Momentary silence.]
She: Well, what?
He: Crap crap crap. My computer’s clock says quarter to six, too.
She: But I thought you said—
He: Yeah, I set the alarm right. But I never adjusted my damn watch.
[Muffled explosions of breath from far side of wall.]
She: So now it’s too late to grill, isn’t it?
He: Uh, yeah, I guess so. Yeah… sorry.
She: So what are we gonna do about dinner?
He: I don’t know. Let me think about it.
My wife and I have an expression we like to use for those times. It’s “LGO” — “Let’s go out”. (This was, of course, in the days when that was possible.)
Don’t you hate when you do that sort of stuff?
Darc: “LGO.” I’ll have to remember that!
(Of course, the funny part is that I first thought: I don’t have to remember it. I’ll be reminded of it every time I look at this post, i.e., since I’m always online.)
It doesn’t hurt for a techie to have his ego punctured every now and then. But at least when it happens at work, I have the option to tell The Missus about it, or not. When it happens at home I am — another useful acronym — SOL. :)
The time change thing here happens over a couple of days. The kitchen clocks get in line first. Then the upstairs alarms. Then the gadget thingees under the TV probably the next day, then the old VCR which always prompts, “how do we change the time on this thing again?”. Then the wrist watches when they are worn, we never get around to changing them until they are on our wrists. The atomic clock on the porch is supposed to change itself, but we always seem to think its not going fast enough, so we change it and then two days later realize it’s either an hour faster or slower than it should be. You’d think we would remember about changing it, but the rhythm seems ingrained, like the changing of the clocks!
Hee.
For some reason, my clock is always wrong. It was 3 hours fast, but now it is 2 hours fast. (My blogs are always timed wrong…)
That’s why I call it Daylight Squandering Time. The worrisome part…and we think about this at our house, too…is how often we spend those sunny days at our separate computers.
Now if you lived in Arizona…
cynth: I’m familiar enough with your house that I’m pretty sure nothing in general would surprise me, especially when it comes to, uh, let’s say the management of electrical/electronic resources. I’m surprised only that your clocks don’t change every time the lights click on or off. :)
Nance: Welcome to RAMH, and thanks for dropping in!
I’ve got a cartoon hanging on my wall here at work. Three panels: (1) Man at computer, obviously writing a blog post or email message, “I am increasingly concerned that the Internet may be having a detrimental effect on family life”; (2) man clicks on “Send”; man half-turns in chair, and says to his wife — sitting at a separate computer behind him — “Honey, did you get that?”… to which she replies “Not now. I’m on eBay.” This is soooooo much a picture of “real” life at our house!
Squirrel: Yeah. Or isn’t there, like, a single county somewhere in Indiana or Ohio which hasn’t bought into the whole Daylight Time song-and-dance?
This made think not of clocks or tech but of a recent dinner conversation in our home. Did I mention this already? But we realized that we’d each been waiting for the other to use the dinner menu. “What do you mean you’ve been waiting for me? I’ve been waiting for you!”
13 years of marriage and we finally know what we want for dinner.
marta: Trying not to read that comment too literally-minded, but, uh, (a) this was a dinner at your home and (b) you have/had a “dinner menu” there?
(I confuse easily sometimes.)
Details aside, I recognize the general shape of that moment. We’ve been married only ten years (in May), but actually been together for 17 to 18. It goes way beyond ability to finish each other’s sentences; sometimes it feels like we can start them.
Lindsey: Greetings, and I apologize for not seeing your comment sooner! (It’d gotten hung up in the blog’s spam trap.)
The clocks in our house mystify any normal human calculation at any time of year, not just during the time-change weekend. On the theory that one can trick oneself into getting up early just by setting the alarm early, for some reason I settled on an hour and 40 minutes as the right degree of earliness. The Missus apparently liked the idea so much that she set hers another four hours ahead of that. The clocks on the stove and microwave are sorta-kinda 15 minutes fast, and so is the one on the car’s dashboard. The VCR is close to accurate, it being too difficult to program a recording based on higher mathematics.
Well, I hate to cook and am mentally challenged when faced with trying to come up with an idea for dinner. So, my husband made a list of things we like and that he likes to cook. The plan was for me to choose something from the “menu” every night.
But we never used this dinner list. My husband would call from work and say, “What do you want to do about dinner tonight?”
I thought it would be pushy to say I wanted him to cook dinner, so I’d say, “Whatever you want.” or something like that.
He thought he was politely asking what I wanted him to cook, and he thought I was telling him I didn’t want him to cook.
We were both being polite and not having very good dinners.
Does that make any more sense?
marta: Yes, thanks, now I understand. (Well, the idea of working from a menu like that — even if the idea wasn’t pursued in practice — did give me pause. Maybe because I’m not used to applying common sense to real life anywhere near that well!) I especially recognize the shape of a conversation with entangled, and mostly unspoken, common and cross-purposes. The marriage handbook that nobody has written needs to include a whole chapter on coping with that.