Lightness

Up here in Seattle, we have pretty significant swings in the number of daylight hours over the course of the year, compared to most other parts of the country (except, of course, Alaska). The upshot of this, for me, is that certain parts of the year are marked by odd behavior on my part. The most alarming one is that in the summer, when it doesn't get dark until the 10:00 hour, I frequently forget to eat dinner at a normal time, since the darkening sky is a cue to me for most of the year. More pertinent to this time of year, though similar in mechanism, is that I tend to work much later in the evening when the light/dark transition moves later and later. At some point towards the summer, this stops, because even I can tell that it's time to go home before 10:00 (usually). But right now, when the sky is staying dusky till nearly 8:00, I find myself looking at the clock and being amazed at how late it has gotten and I'm still at work. This effect is made possible by the fact that we have windows in our lab and offices, a feature that was completely foreign to us just over two years ago when we still worked on main campus and were imprisoned in the center of the building, the lab completely window-less. In the winter, though, the reverse effect doesn't seem to happen quite so much. Unfortunately, one can't justify going home at 4:00 just because it's dark outside - on the contrary, since it's already dark, you just end up working till you're done and then go home. But in the spring, it's always like this, and it always catches me off guard.