“Daylight-saving time.” The term makes it sound like someone is hoarding daylight somewhere to use on a rainy day. Not that it wouldn’t be a bad idea, but the whole notion of gaining or losing an hour when the same number of hours remains in a day seems almost arbitrary. Nonetheless, it has its merits. When daylight-saving time ends each fall, it’s nice to seem like we have that much more time on our hands, be it spent sleeping in an extra hour or staying up late to watch that episode of “The A-Team” where they try to get Boy George to perform in a country-western bar. The sky, though pitch black by 6 p.m., is the limit. Your Mountain Times staff would like to suggest a few time-killers for that extra hour.

Jason Reagan: Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish

I’ll use this extra hour to revel in the absence of smelly political rhetoric, signage, nastiness and general

I’ll be using the hour to see, hear and speak no political evil.

malaise that drips from this past election. In my 20 years as a voter, I’ve never witnessed such commitment to half-truths, mudslinging and outright lying as I have in 2008. Both parties should be ashamed of themselves for their behavior, which wouldn’t be tolerated in a meth-infested kindergarten class. We should all tip our hats to organizations of integrity like FactCheck.org, which had the audacity to call down both the McCain and Obama campaigns for their tactless and dishonest use of television campaign spots.

I will spend my extra hour pondering the words of the patron saint of journalists, H.L Mencken: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

A 232-year-old democratic republic ought to know better.

Come to think of it, I’m not going to honor this whole mess an hour of my time.

I think I’ll take a walk instead.

Melanie Davis: To Celebrate My Birthday

Melanie ate chocolate cake for an hour.

The extra hour this year conveniently fell on my birthday. I had one extra hour to indulge in chocolate cake, sleep in and be completely unproductive.

I spent Sunday mostly in pajamas, indulging in everything lazy and bad for me. What better way to spend a birthday than with an entire cake and a variety of movies? I avoided all housework, except cooking, and unplugged my phone. OK, so I unplugged the phone to avoid the last-minute wave of campaign calls, but there was still a lovely silence in my house.

After celebrating with friends Saturday, I took my birthday to be totally selfish. Between aimlessly trolling the Internet, cooking everything in the pantry, and taking the dog out for multiple rounds of fetch, I just didn’t have time to do laundry.

I am a firm believer birthdays are meant to be the day taken to recharge your batteries in preparation of the next year. Of course, I also celebrate for seven days, so I am not out the special dinners or other means of celebration. Twenty-seven years is too much time to fit into one day, even with an extra hour.

My fiance had a hard time talking me into getting in the car to go to brunch. Typically, I am an on-the-go type of person. I love taking a day to stay at the home and, with no visible neighbors, really enjoy the solitude.

I am not sure which of the above activities my extra hour went toward. I can assure everyone that it was properly wasted. With the official time change at 3a.m., I was officially asleep. But, in my laziness, I didn’t change the clocks in my house until mid-afternoon, so it is anyone’s guess.

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Frank Ruggiero: Feigning Ignorance

Doc Brown’s not the only one with grand ideas about the space-time continuum.

With my extra hour, I’ll likely consider what it would be like to simply ignore the time change – going about my day-to-day activities in, essentially, my own private time zone. In all likelihood, the ruse would hardly last very long at all, as friends, colleagues and my most modest of associates would spurn my attempt with feigned indifference, while secretly they’d be somewhat jealous. Sure, they may have their perceived extra hour in the morning, but I would remain constant as the northern star – a stalwart remnant of times past, only in the present.

A price to pay would be the added nuisance of modified scheduling, be it meetings, deadlines or attempting to program a stubborn satellite alarm clock that only seeks to serve its function. This is a meager price, though, for when the time to “spring forward” creeps back and folks offer kindly reminders to set my clocks, I’m already ahead in the game. “Why did you do it?” some might ask, to which I’d reply, tongue firmly planted in cheek, “I’ll tell you in time.” Perhaps this whole experiment could be an elaborate set-up for a disappointing pun. And so far I’ve only killed a few minutes dreaming this up, so I’ll likely use the remaining time to contemplate other nonsensical notions, like the sound of one foot clapping.

Jeff Eason: Keep Your Eye on the Sky

Jupiter, and its famous red spot, as photographed by the Hubble telescope.

The end of Daylight Saving Time each fall is a mixed blessing. You get an extra hour during the weekend but pay for it with a sunset that occurs approximately 30 seconds after you punch the clock and leave work. If you are forced to find something to do with this perceived extra hour, you might as well do something that takes advantage of the increased darkness. I suggest you get to know the planets Jupiter and Venus a little better.

Throughout the month of November, Venus and Jupiter, the two brightest objects in the sky after the sun and moon, can be seen in the southwestern sky at dusk. Jupiter is the slightly cream colored object in the sky and Venus is the brighter (right now at a negative fourth magnitude) of the two that is closer to the horizon.

As November progresses, Jupiter and Venus will appear to get closer to each other and on December 1 we will see the two in the same patch of the sky, only two degrees apart during the early part of the night. That event, called the evening of conjunction, occurs the day after the new moon, so it should be a spectacular sight if the skies are clear.

If you are more of a morning person, look for Saturn and Mercury during the early part of November. Both can be seen with the naked eye, but use a telescope or binoculars if you want to see more than a speck of light.