Winter

The sun sets earlier in town. Here it is, still 4 weeks till solstice, and the sun is setting at 4:15. Nearly every week last winter and the previous year I'd be surprised when we got to town for paper routes, assuming we still had half an hour of daylight left, and discovering that darkness came in town much earlier because of the houses blocking the horizon and the trees shading whatever light was still bouncing around up in the sky.

Wall clocks that run on batteries should not be on outside walls during the winter. The cold is hard on the batteries. The clock slows down. The person who expects the clock to be two minutes early gets where she's going and discovers that the clock was actually four minutes behind. (Do you remember the "household tip" that said to store your batteries in the refrigerator to keep them fresh? Who came up with that cockamamie advice anyhow???)