Taking The Census

Census Day is this week -- April 1. Already the media reports that people are mailing their forms back on track about as expected.

Do you have questions about the census? Should you respond to all the questions? THe answer is yes, a long as you follow the constitutional requirements.

Respect the constitutionality of the Census. Fill out the packet with your name and a head count. The nosy forms -- or long forms -- are there so that marketers can get demographic data on the cheap.

Even Clark Howard, consumer guru,advises you to comply with only the Constitutional requirement of reporting the head count in your household. (Yes that includes names. Some ancestor will be looking you up in genealogy research one day.)

My question though is, why are people sending it back early. The count is on Thursday, April 1. You mail it back and a wayward cousin shows up to crash with you. Your answer could have screwed up the entire count and result in getting a wacko liberal congressman, rather than the straight arrow conservative you deserve.

Me, I'm waiting until Thursday to fill out my form. There's only two of us here, but I haven't decided whether to add the cat. Then I'm going to lock the door until midnight so that no one can come or go. I don't want to give them the wrong information.

Time To Reset the Clocks

We started last night at bedtime, and by noon today we have scouted out every clock in the house and reset it for Daylight Saving Time. (Okay, one clock in the guest room didn’t need changing. Must not have bothered with it last fall.)

We lost an hour of sleep, but the consolation is that we are one hour closer to spring weather.

Isn’t it amazing that in a country where we can't agree on a political leader, a favorite TV show, and the weather forecasters can't agree on rain or not, that we can all silently agree to set our clocks ahead an hour on the second Sunday in March and undo that action the first Sunday in November.

The idea was proposed by Ben Franklin some 226 years ago and enacted by Congress during the First World War. Since then it has been off and on, but today Americans love their extra hour of daylight during the spring and summer months to grill out and do yard work. They also love to complain about ther kids having to go to school in the dark, but the complaints wear thin after a few months days grow longer on both ends.

Wait, there's a VCR over my desk that I can't connect to a TV. Solution, paste a Post-It note over the display. Problem solved.