Lost In Time

One facet of my recent California trip that was a new thing for me was the fact that I was going to be travelling within the same country, yet was going to be in a completely different time zone - losing three hours in the process. Or rather gaining them, depending on your perspective. Thus, the joy of jet lag was awaited - although as usual was far worse for me coming back to Charleston than when flying out to San Francisco. The analogy I usually give is that in living three hours again, for your body, it's really just like you're staying up late, and then still getting a full night's sleep. The bad thing with coming back is when you have your day considerably shortened (it's even worse going back to the UK when your whole night becomes condensed into a 6-7 hour flight). This whole thing probably explains my grogginess this week.

Anyways, to top all of this off as well, the administration over here passed legislation recently to extend the period of Daylight Savings time (or British Summer Time as it is known in, well, Britain). I'm not 100% sure of the reasons - i think that work efficiency or something factors into it along the line, but it got somewhat lost in the rest of the explanation. Suffice to say, this last Saturday at 1.00am, the clocks were moved forward 1 hour. Now, add this to the fact that it was the last night of the conference, we were all getting up relatively early for our flights back to Charleston AND we were going to be losing an additional three hours as well, then it's small wonder that our bodies didn't know if they were coming or going. Certainly, i have been sleeping a little longer than normal since coming back (always a good thing!). Of course, this now means that I am currently only 4 hours behind friends and family in the UK at the moment - at least until they put their clocks forward in, I think, a week or so. Confused much? No, me neither.