Gaining an hour should play right into an insomniac's hands. If it's hard to cram enough sleep into a 24-hour day, stick 25 hours in a day and use the extra one to catch up. Right? Yeah, well, then comes the next night, when I'm drifting off earlier because it's really later and thinking, "Hey! I can stay up as late as ever and go to bed an hour earlier. That'll make it easier to get up tomorrow morning!"

Funny how things work out. I did go to bed earlier last night, about two hours earlier than I'd typically retire on a Sunday. It still wasn't what you'd call "early," but it should have given me a head start on today. The problem was that I'm not used to sleeping eight hours at a time. After about four hours of restful oblivion, I woke up.

Sometimes you can be midway between sleeping and waking and it's a pleasant experience. Lying in bed late on a Saturday morning, I like to let the day slowly wash over me until I'm ready to get up. That wasn't what was happening last night. What happened last night was that I was fitful and restless for about four hours, and then just when I was ready to fall back into a deep sleep, the alarm went off and I had to get up.

That's not the least bit restful, in case you couldn't tell. I was a bit off all day, almost as if I hadn't slept at all. I was cranky and irritable and prone to exploding at every little thing. A printer paper jam was a major crisis. This guy who's trying to sell us a subscription to his bid list service made me want to reach through the phone and choke him.

And I got totally pissed off when I looked up from the computer at six o'clock and realized it was already dark. Six o'clock! And in another month it'll be dark at five. I can't tell you how much I dread the coming of winter. It's like living underground with the worms and moles. And it lasts for month after dreary month.

Today was like all winter in one day. And I really didn't make anybody's day better, least of all my own. I'm a little ashamed of my overreactions, but a full night's sleep will help. That can't happen until the weekend, though.

I'll tell you how severely I've already been affected by the sudden onset of early darkness. (I don't want to belabor the point, but it's too late to worry about that anyway.) I've redesigned the lighting plan in my house. Yes, I had to move a lamp so that I could keep working after the sudden thud of nightfall. And I wasn't happy about it (or about anything, as you can see).