Time Zone | Pad Patter 11.10

[bestcee]

Where do you live in your Time Zone? Do you like it? Do you wish you were in a different one?

I found out the other day that there's a small movement that wants Indiana to move to Central Time permanently. And of course, my first thought was - Oh please, NO NO NO!!!! I've lived on the most eastern part of the time zone, and it sucks. In the winter the sun is gone at 4pm. In Mass, the other place I lived on the eastern part of the time zone, the sun was gone early too! We had a lot of trees, so it was gone around 3:30pm. It's weird to not be anywhere near dinner and the sun is gone. I expected that visiting Alaska and such, but not in the mainland.

I like living on the western edge of my time zone. I get a lot of light late (in the winter that means there's still sun at 5pm), and if I go west to the next state, I gain an hour. I like not being one of those weird middle time zones - the US seems to forget about Central and Mountain and do most programs based on Eastern or Pacific. When we live Mountain Time, it seemed like we were always lumped with Pacific Time despite being an hour ahead!

 

[Angela Toucan]

I'm in the centre of the universe when it comes to time zones

 

[HavaDrPepper]

I'm pretty much the same as you. In fact, I'm only 45 minutes or so from the eastern Indiana border. I know no different since I've always lived in ET in western Ohio.

But I hate standard time. It's too dark too early for me.

 

[KimJ]

I'm Central time, west of the center of the time zone. After living here for 31 years, I'm pretty used to it. It's weird when I visit family around where I grew up, since they are all over on the eastern side of the zone. Comparatively, it gets dark so early! On the flip side, I once worked a long project out in west Texas during the summer, and it was freaky to me how light it was so late. It was still almost full daylight at 9pm!

 

[gonewiththewind]

I'm in the Eastern edge of Florida's Central Time Zone (Santa Rosa County). A lot of people think we are in the Eastern zone because almost all of Florida is . . . but nooooo, we're way over on the western edge. It does get dark very quickly, usually around 5 pm when we're in standard time. When we're in daylight savings, it will be close to 9 pm before we get nightfall.

 

[Cherylndesigns]

Courtney, Indiana has been "haggling" over the time zone thing since I lived there a hundred years ago. They FINALLY went to Daylight Savings Time - I remember how mad my dad got every year because Indiana didn't change! We lived in Michigan and he always hated that we had that late daylight every year. Now, they're thinking about going to Central Time?

We're on Central Time for the first time ever - I've had the biggest problem getting used to not being on EST and now with the time change, it's no wonder I've had such a hard time this year.

 

[michelepixels]

In Fredericksburg, Virginia, I'm on the east side of Eastern Time. I had to look at a map to see how far west it goes though. I always assumed you and I were in different time zones, Courtney!

I have never given much thought to which side of the time zone I'm in. But I have thought about how much difference just a few degrees of latitude difference it made moving from Los Angeles to Fredericksburg. More darkness here. Now I'm realizing it may not have just been the latitude but because I was on the western side of the Pacific time zone.

 

[HavaDrPepper]

Courtney, Indiana has been "haggling" over the time zone thing since I lived there a hundred years ago. They FINALLY went to Daylight Savings Time - I remember how mad my dad got every year because Indiana didn't change! We lived in Michigan and he always hated that we had that late daylight every year. Now, they're thinking about going to Central Time?

We're on Central Time for the first time ever - I've had the biggest problem getting used to not being on EST and now with the time change, it's no wonder I've had such a hard time this year.

I worked at a company in western Ohio that had customers in Indiana. It was a mess when daily savings time went into effect. The customers had to call in orders by a specific time for it to get on the truck that went in the evenings with the supplies for the next day. They would get so made at the secretary when she told them they missed the cut off. Thankfully, when Indiana started doing DST in 2006, it made her life a lot easier!

@bestcee if Indiana would change, you'd be like Cheryl and easier to coordinate your scrap chats

 

[norton94]

I moved from Los Angeles (PT), far west side of time zone, to Iowa (CT), middle of zone, back in Nov 2004. It was shocking how early it got dark in the winter - like by 4ish it was dusk! I do like it stays light late in summer up to about 9:30pm on the long days, but when the kids were little and it was still light at their bedtime it was hard to adjust them to that initially (especially when neighbor kids stayed outside playing at 8:30-9pm and they could hear that)!

PS I love living in CT for tv purposes because I can watch the late shows without being dead the next day LOL

 

[IntenseMagic]

Where I am is kind of dead center of Eastern Time. The earliest it gets dark here is probably just after 5pm. I do like not being on the Eastern side, and if we ever decide to stay on one time, I really hope they choose to stay on Daylight time. I would so much rather go to work in the dark in the morning than come home in the dark in the evening.

 

[StefanieS]

So I am two hours ahead of @Angela Toucan in Winter for her and an hour in her summer.
Even though South Africa spans two different time zones, we all use African Central Time. Living in Cape Town it's quite western and really doesn't impact our lives that mush. Recently on safari though - my goodness the sun gets up 45 mins ahead of "our time". That did take some getting used to. But we are back home again and all is back to normal and as it should be.

 

[Memaw2Wm]

In Fredericksburg, Virginia, I'm on the east side of Eastern Time. I had to look at a map to see how far west it goes though.

I'm in Northern Virginia (Tysons/McLean/Falls Church) area, so eastern side of Eastern Time. Except for my year or so in Germany, I've lived within 40 miles of my current home my entire life (Arlington, Falls Church, Ft. Meade, MD, and Woodbridge/Dale City).

 

[jk703]

Where I am is kind of dead center of Eastern Time. The earliest it gets dark here is probably just after 5pm. I do like not being on the Eastern side, and if we ever decide to stay on one time, I really hope they choose to stay on Daylight time. I would so much rather go to work in the dark in the morning than come home in the dark in the evening.

This... but I'm in NJ. I actually hate it. I use that word sparingly. Going home from work in the dark is just wrong. I feel like I missed the whole day.

 

[zakirahzakaria]

Reading about how time changes in everyone's locations in this thread, I feel that I should be grateful that I live close to the equator (Malaysia) and hence, our time stays the same all year long. Otherwise, I would be really confused!

Edited to add: We're 8 hours of GMT by the way.

 

[LeeAndra]

[QUOTE="I found out the other day that there's a small movement that wants Indiana to move to Central Time permanently. And of course, my first thought was - Oh please, NO NO NO!!!!"[/QUOTE]

Ha! I'm the opposite -- I think it's silly that Indiana is on Eastern time considering we're 12 hours away from the East Coast. People are always surprised that we're Eastern and not Central. Then I get to launch into my long story about how we didn't change time (and the other two U.S. states that don't change time are AZ and HI) when I was little & the first time I ever changed the clocks was when I was 24 years old.

 

[bestcee]

Now, they're thinking about going to Central Time?

Nah, a very small group wants it. I thought they wanted to go back to no time change (which I REALLY want) but nope. Their 'facts' are hilarious though! Half of them are actually written in a way that supports staying in the Eastern Time Zone. Their big reason to change? 10pm is too late for fireworks in the summer. I don't know that I've lived anywhere where fireworks on a national holiday were before 10 pm.

 

[bestcee]

I think it's silly that Indiana is on Eastern time considering we're 12 hours away from the East Coast.

I can see this point. I just don't want to live on the most eastern part of a time zone.

Maybe we can be like Newfoundland, create our own time zone and be 30 minutes off from Central and Eastern.

 

[HavaDrPepper]

Out of curiosity I just looked at a time zone map for Indiana. I guess I didn't realize that there are some counties that are already in central time. And, looking at a national time zone map, there are quite a few states that are divided among 2 time zones. I knew about Tennessee and Florida because of knowing people in the central time zone area in those states. In all there are 13 states that are in 2 time zones.

When you look at any time zone map, you realize that there really isn't an easy way to divide the country up by time zones. And the southern section of the central time zone is huge... from the Georgia border to the New Mexico border.