I talk a lot about time — how I spend it, how hard it is to decide how to spend it, how little of it there seems to be (most of the time), how easy it is to lose track of. Twice a year, I try not to think about it at all. Whether we're setting the clocks ahead (spring forward) or backward (fall back), I have to make an effort not to let it knock me down and drag me around by the ankles for a week.

That's the plan. After this much time, and all these years, I still haven't figured out a way to do it.

Every time I looked at a clock today, I saw two different times: the time the clock said, and the time my body said. I had to make the mental adjustment, because I couldn't believe it was as early as the clock kept saying it was. It felt so much later, and it was a surprise every single time. The external time was out of phase, but marching on. My internal clock was chugging away like a wheezing old engine, trying to catch up in fits and starts.

It's a good thing I didn't have any urgent business, because I needed a day to let the storm subside long enough to patch the leaks in the hull. For once, all I wanted to do was press the pause button for as long as it took to get the picture back in focus. I never know how hard the time change is going to hit me, even when I do my best to prepare for it. Obviously, staying up half the night wasn't the answer. I'll have to try something else next time.

It's partly a matter of mindset, but it's also physical. I'm convinced of this, because even though I know I'll have problems adjusting, I still can't control the situation. I'm not used to that.

Anyway, since I didn't have anything I had to do today, I tried to set myself up for tomorrow. I'm determined not to let this asynchronous temporal displacement drag on for a week or more, as it has in past years. I want to look at the clock and see one time, starting tomorrow.

Not only was it way too early all day, it was way too cold. I resisted until after dark (which came shortly past noon, I think), but I finally had to turn up the thermostat. It's the first time since early spring that I've had the furnace on, and I shudder to think how high my next PG&E bill will be. But since I was shuddering anyway, it doesn't seem to matter as much.

I know, I know. I could be living in Fargo, so I shouldn't complain. (No I couldn't.)

That musty, dusty odor of a furnace that's been out of service for six months was so overwhelming that I wished I'd turned it on earlier in the day, before it got too cold to open doors and windows. Once I got past the shallow breathing and light-headedness, though, the warm air felt much better.

World Series notes: Hey! Baseball might not make it to November after all. Last night's game was over early because the Diamondbacks scored nine runs in the first four innings. Tonight's game was over early because they scored one run in the second. The Yankees never had a chance, with Randy Johnson shutting them down so easily, so even Matt Williams' three-run homer in the seventh was anticlimactic.

Mom came by this morning to bring me a copy of our local paper, The Press Democrat, which has an article today about online journaling. The writer, Debra Bass, interviewed me a few weeks ago, and she tracked down three other Sonoma County journalers as well. She did a good job, and I'm not featured so prominently that I have to worry about anyone from work tracking me down. I hope.