It's 8:03 A.M. Do you know what time it is?

For the last several months at 8:03 A.M. every morning, a clock has sounded with the words, "It's eight oh three A.M.; it's eight oh three A.M.; it's eight oh three A.M.," and on and on for an entire minute, unless I get to the Off switch to shut out the mechanical voice.

The clock is the one on my pedometer, a freebie trinket from the National Library of Medicine booth at a trade show many years ago, which has proved very useful in measuring my steps while walking and even biking. But several months ago, I managed to set the alarm, unintentionally, and even though I (finally) located the printed instructions, I have not been able to undo it.

This Sunday morning in Spain I was not disturbed until 9:03 A.M. That's because this morning, Spain--and all of Europe--finally switched clocks to Daylight Saving Time, or Summer Time, as it is known here. Spring forward, fall back. What had been 8:03 now is called 9:03--except by my pedometer clock.

The last three weeks have wreaked havoc on my sensibilities. I am used to the U.S. east coast being six hours later than we are here in Spain. It's an easy switch. Around the time of my lunch at 2:00 P.M. here, people are going to work at home. When I settle down for the evening news, they are beginning to think about their lunch. And if I am still sitting at my computer at 10:30 P.M., they are just closing up work for the day.

But since the U.S. changed its clocks on March 8, and we didn't change until last night, we were, temporarily, only five hours ahead of U.S. time. I was late for my usual telephone call to my mother on Saturday afternoon. I failed to check my email at a computer in Connecticut before the office opened at 8:30 A.M.--though I only had to wait up until 9:30 P.M. my time (instead of 10:30) to check the end-of-day messages at that office. And my New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Jim Lehrer Newshour, and Katie Couric emails have been coming in at hours that I did not expect. In short, I have been totally disoriented.

Since they both do shift time twice each year, spring and fall, I have never been able to understand why the U.S. and Europe don't change on the same date. Now, after an afternoon of research--made even shorter by that hour I lost this morning--I still don't know why. But I do know that the changes are embedded in their respective laws. Before 1996, countries in Europe changed to summer or winter time, as the case was, at different times. The European Union standardized the time switch, and since 1996 European Summer Time has been observed from the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October. The United States, which first adopted DST during WWI, then abandoned it until WWII, started regular observances with the Uniform Time Act of 1966. There have been periodic revisions since then, and starting in 2007, Daylight Saving Time begins the second Sunday morning in March, and extends until the first Sunday morning in November.

I figure I have seven months before my time is out of synch again. And I hope that by that time I will have figured out how to change the talking mechanical voice on my pedometer.