Thank you all for your insight...These are all good reasons, and I inconveniences that I wouldn't have thought of. I'm glad to finally get the other side of the story. I personally wish that they would just pick one time year-round and stick with it! In answer to Hoptown's questions: Most city dwellers would be considered late sleepers...I get up at 5:00am, and I would expect that most people around here and in Washington get up about an hour after me. Technically explained, the Government's Daylight Savings Plan is based on shifting the "wasted" light in the morning (while they're sleeping) to the evening, when they can clearly use the daylight more productively, spending that valuable time riding around in golf carts, drinking martinis and brainstorming about important new laws to pass. And the savings doesn't stop there. By not having to turn the headlights on, the golf carts obviously do not have to be re-charged nearly as often, resulting in a $1.2 billion* dollar savings in electricity annually! (*Adjusted for price-gouging.) So you can see it's a simple, yet brilliant plan. And, if the Government says it saves us money, we should believe them...They've never lied to us before, right? ;) Take care, all.

Oh, thanks for catching that, leira- I didn't realize the date was not MD weekend this time. I've never been on a Sunday. By the looks of traffic on Saturday, I'd not chance a Sunday visit if it was something I really wanted to get to unless I was local, which I'm not, so I 'plan' the trip for Saturday.

Thanks for the reminder. Now we'll be eating dinner one hour later because I'll be staying outside one hour later. :)

The prior owners had a whole house generator installed. It is enormous, i think 60,000 watts, i believe the largest you can have in a residential setting? It has a dedicated 1,000 gallon underground propane tank. It automatically comes on when the power goes out; you only know power has been lost because it flickers momentarily. It powers the entire house, which is pretty large. Personally, I would never have installed such a thing. They left us files on many household appliances, and this thing cost about 20k installed, plus a cement pad and fencing to hide it. My reply was, what, so I can save a couple of pounds of burger in the freezer? Silly. Well, in the 2 yrs or so we have been in the house, there were two hurricanes and an ice storm. I think in toto there has been three weeks without power over this time! I still may not have been impressed until I realized that, if you have well water, no electricity means no water! THAT is the killer. I can usually keep warm, esp w a fpl, and use candles, read a good book. But not being able to flush a toilet? No thanks. So, my advice is, consider it. 1) I would not put in one as large as the PO did, and I don't think it needs to run everything (ours heats our pool and lights our trees ... silly!). 2)BUT, I would not want one that you need to go out and refuel. Often you won't be able to do that easily. I am told we could go three weeks as normal, using our u/g tank. and 3) If you have a generator, do not run it continuously for days on end, even in emergencies. You need to turn it off for a few hours from time to time. PS. Random tip. We would freeze bags of water in the freezer when we had the generator on during the day, and then when we turned the generator off at night, we would fill the fridge with the bags of ice. The next morning the ice was water and we would do it all over again ...