A suspicion sneaked up on me last night while I was pondering how many more days it will be until I can walk home from work in daylight rather than trusting my life to a jacket with glow-in-the-dark circles all over it.  After all, drivers in Seattle are not well-known for their attentiveness to pedestrians, and in darkness it’s only a matter of time before some speeding Subaru hits me off to the side of a sidewalk-less street.

It occurred to me that when we stopped at Burgerville for a miraculous milkshake on our way home from Portland, it was almost 5:00 p.m. and (here’s my point) it was still daylight.  We walked into this little fast-food joint and as I read the menu board I wondered aloud what “red ice cream” was.  One of my companions pointed out that the sign actually said “real ice cream”.  She is a lot younger than I and her eyes do not come with their own baggage.

But I digress.  When I walked my windy way home yesterday at 5:00 in Seattle it was nowhere near still daylight.  Not even a little bit!  Suspecting a conspiracy or perhaps a loss of memory, I went scrounging around for an online tool with which to test my theory.  Indeed, I caught that little conspiring culprit red-handed, with his hands in the cookie jar, so to speak,  and here was the proof.  Latitude.  Latitude, Latitude:  on Saturday, January 3, 2009, it got dark in Seattle ten minutes earlier than in Portland!  Yes, I should have known this.  Yes, even though I was admiring my fingernails and daydreaming about boys during class, I did pay attention in school when the great educators informed me about what differences might be concurrent with changes in latitude.  But no, I never put two and two together to get… ten minutes.

Well, once I started down that road, I just coudn’t stop, could I?  I enquired about sunset in Eugene:  17 minutes later than in Seattle.  In Sacramento?  20 beautiful minutes more of daylight.  Before I got too depressed, I checked Vancouver to the north.  Poor things, they were shorted 11 minutes more than we were that day. 

I muttered to myself, poured another glass of wine and tried to think of what Seattle could offer that balances out the lack of daylight.  Pretty soon, it came to me just like the night on little cat feet. 

I only have to wait until June 21, 2009. 

 That, my friends, is where the payoff is.  On that day I can gloat.  For on that day, that fine, fine day, Seattle gets their sun 31 minutes earlier than Los Angeles, and keeps it more than an hour after LA is in the dark.  That day, that glorious, wonderful day, we will have daylight for 16 hours.  16 beautiful hours!! of Sun!! in Seatt…..

wait a minute.  The sun doesn’t shine when it’s raining, does it?

Sigh.  Daydreams still come in handy sometimes.