As Director of the World Famous Institute I was surprised and somewhat dismayed at the fact that the days here in the immediate area of the Institute’s holdings are getting noticeably shorter. It was just a moment ago and it was light until nearly 10:00 pm. You could work late. Get things done. Now just a low belch after supper it was getting dark. I mean, like, Geeze. We have things to do yet that require long periods of light. Places to go, pictures to take, stuff to look at. Check out the picture above. That’s what happens when it gets dark early. Well I immediately called a meeting.

Gathering the heads of the various departments that are responsible for handling these types of events I demanded answers. “WTF is going on?” was one of my first queries. Looking around to see who I could pin down for some straight answers my gaze swept over the my elite team of specialists. We have cast offs from NOAA, The WMO: World Meteorological Service, The National Weather Service, the one run by the government, even CoCoRaHS or the Community Collaborative Rain Hail & Snow Network, none of them would look me in the eye. We even have that goofy intern wunderkind that has The WeatherBug widget on his computer at the table, as it seems most of these other supposed experts ask him daily for the forecast. No one ventured an answer.

“This shall not stand!” I roared in my best dictatorial voice “These days shall not get shorter until we get all the crap done we’re supposed to and If heads have to roll, then I advise you to get steel collars on your wife beaters, because they will.” The room got quiet, even the WeatherBug kid snuffed out his joint. They knew I was serious. We’ve had purges here before and for a lot less reason. I reminded them if they had any chance in hell of getting that back pay I was holding just for circumstances like this, they had better get things straightened out and I mean now. Yeah that got the sweat rolling down their faces.

 Amazonian Rosewood table, imported before the moratorium on wasting irreplaceable timber resources went into effect, that went from the sublime to the ridiculous. “Let’s pull an iceberg down and plant it off the coast of California and reflect sunlight back this way. That’ll get us a couple more hours.” This was from the NOAA guy. Every other word out of his mouth was iceberg  this and iceberg that. I remembered they punched his ticket for spending too much time out on the icebergs until he was just too loopy to find his butt with both hands behind him. He may not have been our best pick of the litter.

Someone asked the guy from the WMO, the ex-World Meteorological Service person, for a suggestion but no one could get him to answer until we provided him with a mike and a whiteboard. He’s turned out to be useless. They wouldn’t even send his dossier over, said it was classified. That’s probably why we got him so cheap.

The suggestions flew around the table, each one more preposterous than the next until a quiet voice was heard back at the end of the table. “How much more time do you need each day? How many hours?” The room went deathly still. You could have heard a pin drop. It was the stoner kid, the intern we took in after they towed the 79 Pontiac he was living in. We hired him because he was able to get Outlook to work again and we could get our email. He’s now the head of our IT department and will make big, I mean big bucks, if we ever pay him. I thought for  a minute and said “About 4 hours.” “What time is it now” he asked. I looked at my steel-cased, waterproof to 600 meters Rolex chronometer and said “11:15”. “Set your clocks back 4 hours.” he said.

Set your clocks back 4 hours! Set your clocks back? That would make it like 7:15 in the morning. We had the whole day ahead of us. “Eureka!!!” someone yelled, I think it was that woman from CoCoRaHS and pandemonium broke loose. What an absolute perfect solution and it didn’t cost anything, other than hiring that crazy guy to climb the tower and change that clock up there, but that was nothing compared to the productivity we’d get with the days made 4 hours longer. Who would have thought that little 420 burner, I think his name is Billy Haze, would have the answer. My aide, in a quiet aside, said I should reward him somehow, do something nice for him. So I told him that he could move from his tent into one of the dorm rooms in the intern barracks. He quickly asked if it could be one of the heated ones. I nearly balked but thinking of all the time he saved us I said yes, and he immediately split to move his stuff before I changed my mind.

Right now everyone is in feverish hyperactivity determined to wring every second out of those new 4 hours. Quarterly reviews are coming up and since their pay, or lack of it, is dependent on their scores everyone wants to look like a hero. We’ll see. Personally I’m soon off to an important shoot and can’t wait until I get to pack those 4 hours with pictures from my latest adventure. If I run out of light, I may set my watch back another hour. Genius that kid, absolute genius.