ATLANTA — It's that time of year again when a perhaps-outdated timekeeping practice that began in World War I robs us of an hour of sleep for a weekend - Daylight Saving Time.
Come 1:59 a.m. on Sunday morning (March 13), we'll skip right past the 2 a.m. hour to 3 a.m. and the "spring forward" will be complete.
If it seems hard to justify why we keep doing this every year, don't worry, you're not alone in thinking that - more than a dozen states have passed laws to adopt Daylight Saving Time permanently.
Among those states is Georgia, where the legislature passed a permanent Daylight Saving Time law last year that was signed by Gov. Brian Kemp.
And yet, here we are still needing to spring forward. How come?
Why do we still spring forward in Georgia?
The answer is fairly straightforward: It's actually up to Congress.
As mentioned above, Georgia's not alone in trying to do away with these yearly time-change rituals. A number of states want to adopt permanent Daylight Saving Time, but it can't happen until Congress amends the Uniform Time Act.
The Uniform Time Act was adopted in 1966, basically, to stop states from doing their own Daylight Saving Time schedules.
The trick with the Uniform Time Act is states don't have to observe Daylight Saving Time - and two states, Arizona and Hawaii, don't, instead staying on the permanent "fall back" timeline.
But you can't go in the opposite direction - staying permanently on Daylight Saving Time an hour ahead - without Congress' blessing.
And until Congress changes the law, Georgia's law to stay on Daylight Saving Time will basically be nothing more than a symbolic protest against losing an hour of sleep once every March.