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Tuesday 13 March 2012

Dark and Cold

The clocks went forward this weekend, in the middle of my 3-day 7am shift run. The consequence was that, while on Saturday I drove to work in blazing sunshine, on Sunday and Monday it was still pitch black. Did I get to enjoy the extra hour of daylight in the evenings? Of course not, I was so tired that last night I was in bed by 8pm and fast asleep by 8:30pm. By 8am it's light again though, so I guess anyone not driving to work before 7am is fine, which will include me as I have no more 7am starts scheduled.

 It snowed last night to add to the fun. Here in the valley (about 350ft elevation) we just got a smattering, enough to require scraping the car windows and being careful driving, but up in the mountains there was up to 4 feet of snow in one go. Many schools are closed, or delaying their starts, which makes great fun for working parents. In the US a few snow days are expected every year, and built into the education schedule. In London this amount of snow would cause transport chaos. Odd to remember that on Friday I was sitting out on the patio at lunchtime eating a salad.

I finally get a 2-day weekend, albeit on a Tuesday/Wednesday, my first in over a month, unless you count the time I spent off work with the 'flu on 21st-23rd February. Split weekends have the advantage that you don't have to work so many days straight, but a proper 2-day break is really required to recharge the batteries. I booked off the coming weekend anyway so my boss couldn't schedule me for 7am starts, so Beth and I can enjoy some weekend time together, and maybe have a mutual shopping trip.

2 comments:

  1. In the middle of your shift? Does this mean you got paid for an hour that you didn't actually work?

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  2. In the middle of my 3-day 7am shift run, that is, a run of 3 consecutive days of 7am starting shifts. So I did a shift (Saturday), the clocks changed, then I had another shift (Sunday).

    The Sunday shift was particularly tiring as it felt like it started an hour earlier than 7am.

    There were, of course, other employees in while the clocks changed. I think they just stayed an extra hour to make up the time.

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