I want to live on the western end of a time zone

[...because Frank Black has already claimed living on an abstract plain.]

I may have discussed this before, but I want to end up near the western end of a time zone (preferably Mountain time, so that means western Montana or Idaho). If the time zones were simply longitudinal lines, then the western edge of one would be almost exactly an hour later than the eastern edge. But they're not, the lines wander as does any other political boundary on the planet. So in some cases the borders can be more than an hour apart. For example, today in the Central time zone the sun set at 4:39 in Chicago and 6:05 in Valentine, TX, a difference of 86 minutes. But obviously there are latitudinal factors coming into play there. In the Mountain zone, at roughly the same latitude, the difference between Rosebud, SD, at 4:28, and Owyhee Reservoir, OR, at 5:34, was 66 minutes.

I first noticed this phenomenon when I was staying with relatives in west-central Nebraska in the summer. The summer evening's twilight seemed to go on forever, and part of that was because they weren't that far from the western edge of the Central time zone. So by the time you factor that, plus long summer days and Daylight Savings Time into it all, it was still twilight after 9:30. And isn't that what you want, at least in the summer? To get off work and know you still have four or five hours of daylight left? Of course, that means by definition sunrise is an hour later, too, so for early starters, it might be more ideal to live on the eastern edge.

Just something weird to think about in the early darkness...