It's Candy Time - literally

Earlier this year, I was having a debate with a coworker about daylight savings time. I insisted that the time changed in October, he was thoroughly convinced that it happened in September. Imagine our surprise when we looked at my gigantic office calendar and saw that it was, in fact, in November. I was confused, but excited at the prospect of extra time before that awful period when you have to leave work after dark.

The time change is part of the recently enacted Energy Policy Act, because three extra weeks of daylight apparently aids in the energy conservation effort (and if someone could explain to me how that works, I'd like to know). However, there are also theories that the lobbying efforts of American candy companies had something to do with it. The word on the street is that the candy companies wanted an extra hour of daylight, which would result in an extra hour of trick-or-treating on Halloween...and you can take it from there. Their selling point was that trick-or-treating in daylight is safer for children (so they don't get run over while gathering an extra hour's worth of cholesterol--I mean, candy).

Now, maybe they can start campaigning to get an extra hour of light on Thanksgiving and Christmas, too, so we can just do away with Daylight Savings altogether, and never have to suffer through that one Saturday night in the spring with one less hour of sleep, or that first day after the change in the fall when it gets dark before Happy Hour is over. Where's my extra hour of daylight for half-price appetizers?