Random bullets of why is it so dark?

I was just getting accustomed to driving to campus in the daylight and suddenly I'm feeling my way down the highway again because it's pitch-black outside. I contend that Daylight Saving Time discriminates against morning people--and trust me, the world is a safer place when I'm not driving in the dark. I'm scheduled to teach a couple of 8 a.m. classes next year but that's the last time. Let someone else take over the early-morning hours--I'm moving to the daylight!

Did I change all the clocks at my house? No, I did not. I changed the ones I could reach. Let the tall people change the others. Of course this means that I can't casually glance at a clock without first stopping to remember whether I've changed it.

Last Friday half of my 8 a.m. class was missing, so I arbitrarily assigned a minuscule number of extra-credit points for those who completed the in-class writing activity. Word must have gotten around because suddenly I received a pile of e-mails offering various not-very-convincing explanations for students' absences. Apparently we had an epidemic of malfunctioning alarm clocks early Friday. I imagine these students showing up just a few minutes after the pearly gates slam shut and mumbling about faulty alarms. Too bad. You snooze, you lose.

Would you rather grade three short essays or two slightly longer ones? Not asking for a friend--I changed the assignment structure in a literature class to require two longer and more complicated essays instead of the previous three short essays, mostly to minimize my own frustration with students' abysmal performance in online peer review. I also made meaningful participation in peer review a portion of the grade, and I very carefully defined the meaning of each word in that phrase. The result is fewer drafts and papers to read, but each one takes a little more effort. Will I hold on to this system? Let's wait until the second set of papers comes in before we decide. 

Meanwhile, we need to decide on the color of our new roof! For several reasons we're leaning toward charcoal, which will surround us entirely in various shades of gray, allowing our house to fade indistinctly into the twilight as if it were a mirage. Maybe I'll paint the front door red. Of course, as dark as it is out there this morning, you'd never know we had a house at all.