Daylight saving time, Rubio, Oreos and more

Time for me to clean out my notebook on the shortest day of the year. Literally. Today is a 23-hour day, since daylight saving time starts.

This is the best of all days, including Christmas, baseball opening day and the day the new phone books arrive on my doorstep, confirming that I am still alive.

It's the perfect combination of anticipation and a dramatic change in rhythm. The start of daylight saving time (and once again, why not call it "standard time," since it covers nearly eight months of the year) makes it still sunny at 6:30 p.m. When the 8-to-5 workers of the world come home, we have a few extra hours of daylight every day.

It's also the start of the ramp up for summer. With daylight saving time comes warmer weather, baseball spring training, car windows rolled down and barbecues. And summer re-runs, like "The Mac Davis Show."

Daylight saving time. The best day of the year.

On to the topics du jour . . .

• In case you're wondering, the other top days of the year include baseball opening day, the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, Thanksgiving, Mrs. Brad's birthday and that day every other year when the Giants win the World Series.
• Who will win "The Bachelor?" I say Lauren, but that's just a guess.
• More TV: I get reminded of how old I am every time I watch an episode of "House Hunters" and am impressed by a home – only to hear the people on the show talk about how old it looks. For instance, when did ceiling fans go out of style? And why?
• If you want to be confused, go to the store to buy Oreos. There are 50 different flavors. How did that happen?
• More Oreos: What happened to Hydrox, the old-school, low-budget alternative?
• If Marco Rubio drops out of the Republican presidential race, I'll be OK. Not because of his politics, but because I have repeatedly called him Ricky Rubio, the name of the Minnesota Timberwolves point guard.
• More NBA: If Stephen Curry retired today, he'd do it as the greatest shooter in NBA history. But a Curry retirement would also surprise his teammates and his fans, since there is another month left in the regular season.
• If you told the teenage Brad that a long beard, skinny jeans and shiny shoes would be stylish, I would have laughed so hard that I might have split my leisure suit.
• Mrs. Brad had left-shoulder surgery recently, which means one thing: There's a new southpaw arm-wrestling champion in our house!
• No one asked, but I consider people who named directional states lazy. North Dakota? South Dakota? West Virginia? North Carolina? South Carolina? There's no reason that they couldn't come up with a new name, is there?
• Along the same lines, is  York, Pennsylvania, the "old" version compared to New York?
• Why didn't Liza Minnelli star in a remake of "The Wizard of Oz?" It would have been much more dramatic, if that's possible.
• I can't formulate a great answer if someone asks me why it's OK to eat beef, but not to eat horse or dog meat. But please don't tell my dog.

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.