It's the last day of daylight savings time, so I felt obliged to take advantage of what daylight there was, while we were still saving it. Tomorrow it starts getting dark an hour earlier, although as dark as today was, it might be hard to notice. With rain on the way next week, I needed to get some weeds pulled and get the yard waste container filled. It's a minor obsession of mine, to be able to drag the full container to the curb every Thursday night.

I spent most of the day puttering around. I rearranged the makeshift terra cotta birdbaths in the garden. I finally gave up on the butterfly garden that was attracting yellowjackets but nary a butterfly. I'll try it again next spring, when the color comes back to the yard. I also got some bills paid this afternoon, and I even got a load of laundry done. (And thanks for stopping by so I could tell you that.) I tried to sit on the porch and read, but it was just too cold. I guess that's how it's going to be from now on.

Tomorrow is technically the day with 25 hours in it, since the clocks get set back at 2:00 am. But if (like me) you're usually awake at two in the morning, it's today that becomes the longest day of the year. That doesn't make getting up tomorrow morning any easier, but it might make going to bed tomorrow night a more inviting proposition. After all, when it starts getting dark in the middle of the afternoon, it begins to feel like nighttime all day long.

The lame-ass local cable company (okay, so it's AT&T Broadband) sent me a postcard announcing that they're changing the lineup on November 28. They didn't say why, but I know it's to accommodate the new Bay Area NBC affiliate, which as of January 1 will be Channel 11 from San Jose, and not our Channel 4 as it's been for fifty years. (You won't be surprised to learn this has everything to do with money.)

When you live out in the country, you don't get the wonderful cable service they provide those rich city-dwellers. We don't have as many channels or as many options. There's no pay-per-view at all (as of November 28). VH1 and Fox Sports Net share a channel location on a part-time basis, as do C-SPAN and the Weather Channel. We do, however, get the Food Network full-time on basic cable.

All this is why I pay big bucks for satellite service. With no fanfare at all, the satellite provider (okay, it's DirecTV) has added three more new channels: History International, Discovery Science and Discovery Civilization. There may be more that I haven't even found yet. I also have the advantage of watching CNN International instead of just plain old CNN. Plus I get dozens of pay-per-view channels (which I never watch, since I already don't have time for all the movies and programs I like.)

All of this is kind of silly, since most of my attention for the next week will be on Channel 2, the Fox affiliate that's showing the World Series. Over 200 channels, and I'm watching one I can get with a string and a soup can. However, if Fox promotes the new show 24 any more, I'll feel as if I've already seen it. I was excited about the concept (a whole season of shows that portray one day's events, an hour each week) when I first read about it a few months back. Now I'm all ho-hum about it. That's overselling, Fox.

World Series notes: I wonder how many people were still watching the first game of the World Series after the Diamondbacks took a 9-1 lead in the fourth inning. (I have to admit, by then I was watching with less than fully rapt attention. Half-rapt maybe. But I'm glad I hung around long enough to see the latest Harry Potter TV ad.) It was quite an unexpected offensive explosion by a team known for pitching and defense (and scoring nine runs in a week, more often than in one game).

Even those of us who picked the Yankees to win the Series had conceded this game to Arizona, with the nearly unhittable Curt Schilling on the mound. Some managers might have taken Schilling out then, to save him for a more competitive game later in the series, but Bob Brenly doesn't work that way. The Yankees have been in too many World Series to be too concerned about one loss.

I love the way Tim McCarver explains everything so patiently, as if it's something I'm not quite bright enough to grasp.

If you're new here, I don't write about baseball much, despite the journal's title. Just so you know — although what I do write about never gets much better than this.

I'd like to express publicly my appreciation to my Representative in Congress, Lynn Woolsey, for voting against the "Patriot Act," the anti-terrorist bill that sailed through the House, 357-66, and was passed 98-1 by the Senate, which apparently didn't realize it was repealing the Fourth Amendment. (Thanks also to Russ Feingold.)