So if you were like me this morning, standing there proofing the newspaper — because, let’s face it, everybody proofs the paper in the morning — and you were looking at the sunrise/sunset times and thinking that someone was laying a little lying down on you about when exactly the sun was to be setting today, there’s this: A sunrise/sunset calendar, compiler, calculator thingy.

Maybe I was a little rummy because of the long weekend (it was one hour longer, y’know), but I just kept staring at the weather/almanac box and doing the time-change math in my head (repeating the “spring forward, fall backward” saying like a mantra), trying to figure out if the sun really was setting before 5 p.m. today, or if someone had screwed up. It took an inordinate, and embarrassing, long bit of time to get that figured out.

After the math fail, I had to draw a diagram, and then I had to look it up at the linked site above. And then I had to double confirm the answer by looking it up on another of our weather service sites.

It’s true, the sun set at 4:49 p.m. today in Havre. Where I live. In the dark.

I say the sun should live it up more often and stay out later in the winter. We could teach it to ski and ice skate in all the extra time.

The sun is so lazing in the winter when I need it most at: pam(at)viewfromthenorth40.com