Thus, we never change time here. Now, while that is simple for the folks living in AZ (no repeating silly tomes to remember which way to turn the clocks, no excuses for being late to church on Sunday - or late to work on Monday, no having to work an hour less on night shift, or an hour more in with the 'fall back'); it does present a quandary. Every one of our relatives live outside of Arizona. Most in the CST zone, some in the EST zone. The one or two hour time difference was easy to understand - but now we're stretching it to 2 and 3 hours, which means my "calling schedule" will be really messed up.
The alarms are already sounding, regarding Dean's open declaration of riding on RAGBRAI this summer. After reading his post about it (mind you, we had briefly discussed the notion of him riding - reading it here was when I found out that he had registered) I cautioned him - "Our families will be calling! They will accuse you of trying to make me a 'young' widow!!" I had a call from sister-in-law Kathy two days ago....sure enough! Last night at the astronomy club meeting, friend Liz.... echoing the same sentiments, added by "How can you let him do this????" We have finally talked about this, in earnest, and I really have 100% trust in Dean's judgement. I trust that he will talk to his doctor about it beforehand. His athletic ability is not new - he's very athletic, and working towards this goal is healthy for him! Also, RAGBRAI is not a 'race' - thus, if he's feeling overworked on it then he can opt to take a day off and take it easy. I also trust him to not do 
anything to intentionally cause me to cry. I think it will be great for him to get out there and ride with the Toddville Toads again, and I know that he is very excited about it! He's out riding this morning, and it's a beautiful thing to see him on his bike again! I should be so industrious!
This was a rough week, for both of us. Dean had to work evening shift all week, I worked Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights. We got to see each other in the mornings for about 5 minutes - as he was waking up, and I was falling asleep. Neither of us liked it very much. We're so used to spending time together, and we enjoy that! Last night we were able to enjoy going to the TAAA meeting. The topic was astrophotography, and though Dean was supposed to be one of the speakers, he bowed out due to lack of time processing his most recent images. Kudos were given to him, however, by one of the speakers, listing Dean as "one of the top 10 astrophotographers in the United States". Dean scoffed at that, but he doesn't see how wonderful his images really are! Tonight's activity is a public star party on the Uof A mall (grassy area in front of Flandreau Observatory). We're both planning to set up our telescopes, as more are better! While these public star parties at the Flandreau are held in a very well lit area, there are always a lot of people who show up - families with small children, students, tourists. It's a great public outreach event, and we can show them Venus and Saturn tonight, and maybe I'll get to use our cool laser pointer we got at Christmas time!Note from Dean- Part of the reason Arizona doesn't follow the rest of the country on daylight savings - when it is 100+ degrees during a summer day, you want the cool air of evening to get here as soon as possible, thus, we are always on MST. That also means the summer sunrise is at 5:30 n the morning - perfect for walking the dog or taking a bike ride before work. Think of it this way - during the winter we are the same time as New Mexico, in summer, we're the same time as California... Speaking of bike rides, I pushed hard on a 10 mile ride wednesday that I felt the next day, and just got back from a recreational-pace 16 mile ride this morning and feel great!
There is one other state that avoids the changing of the clocks nonsense... Hawai'i
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