It seems as if I just reset my car clock to daylight-saving time!

Actually, I did put it off for quite a while.

Regularly attending Sunday morning church services is a good way to make sure you are on track. This is because the change from daylight-saving to standard time, and vice versa, is always made on a Sunday in the wee hours of the morning.

I have learned that if you think you are roughly on time for church but find yourself waiting for an hour or so in an empty parking lot, or else arrive just as all of the reliable, well-organized members of the congregation are filing out to coffee hour, you should ask yourself the following: Is this either a.) spring, or b.) fall?

If the season is one or the other, chances are that everyone else has just a.) sprung forward, or b.) fallen back, and any minute now some smart aleck will notice and point out to the others that you somehow once again didn’t get the memo.

It is really hard to save face in this situation. You can pretend that you weren’t planning to attend church anyhow but were just on your way to the diner, but then why are you all dressed up, relatively speaking?

Since I didn’t go to church last Sunday, which was Halloween, it is possible that I am still blithely proceeding on daylight-saving time, while all around me have progressed to standard time.

Where to turn for help? I will consult my trusty “Associated Press Style Manual and Libel Manual,” which is, as my editor well knows, always at my fingertips.

“Daylight-saving time: Not savings, note the hyphen,” I read.

“A federal law, administered by the Transportation Department, specifies that daylight time applies from 2 a.m. on the first Sunday of April until 2 a.m. on the last Sunday of October in areas that do not specifically exempt themselves.”

Halloween was the last Sunday of October, but I’ve heard nothing about daylight-saving time so far. Better go on line.

According to “Headlines, World,” by Jonathan Mandel, “According to the Daylight Savings Time (sic) 2010 schedule, for all residents of the US and Canada, effective Sunday, November 7, 2010, the clocks fall back…” This source states that daylight-saving time will return March 14, 2011.

There are exceptions: Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam and the Northern Marianas, don’t bother with daylight-saving time. Neither do Hawaii or Arizona. I guess they all figure they have enough sunshine.

Which makes it all more confusing to remember that Michigan, in 1966, fought tooth and nail–or hoof and mouth– against the institution of daylight-saving time. Michigan has lots of water, but no one could claim it is a state with sunshine to spare.

One argument I recall is that changing the time back and forth an hour would upset the milk cows, but my guess is that those cows never knew how to tell time anyhow. They weren’t punching the clock. I’ll bet that it was human beings, not cows, who were behind the opposition, afraid they would look like fools when it became clear they were not able to master the intricacies of the time change. I’ll bet the cows were never even consulted.

The United Kingdom went back to standard time on October 31, so why has the united States (with the exception of Puerto Rico, Arizona, Hawaii, etc.) opted to hold out for an extra week?

Is this a decision of the Department of Transportation, and if so, what does the DOT hope to gain?

Maybe it is a government attempt to throw the terrorists off balance. By messing with the time, they figure, they will thwart the terrorists, or at least seriously annoy them. Terrorists, and extremists of any kind, are so literal. With them, everything has to be by the book. Everything is black and white. Terrorists would go nuts if the DOT arbitrarily changed US time. Right?

Wrong. Unfortunately, simply because terrorists and other extremists are so literal, they keep on top of such details. They always have their car clocks right. It’s people like me who are thrown off track.

Remember, Sunday, Nov. 7.

And by the way, no more political ads! Hurray!

Have a good week.