Earth Hour!

On Saturday, Andrew and I celebrated Earth Hour! We turned off and unplugged all of our power outlets (minus the oven and refrigerator). The point was to spend an hour that would normally be spent with the lights on, off. According to google.com and the local papers, the designated hour was 8pm-9pm local time, but we opted to participate from 7:30 - 8:45pm.

Andrew was skeptical at first. He pointed out an hour without power would do little to counteract the environmental problems of the world. I, the ever optimist, argued that a small difference is better than no difference. If we all do what we can, it adds up, and an hour without power didn't sound like such a bad idea. He's getting used to how excited I get about things, so he caved in pretty quickly. "So when do we do this hour thing?" he asked, and I knew it was a go.

It was a little weird at first. At that time of day, Andrew and I are usually on our computers together or playing Wii Golf. Sometimes, I'm in the bed reading (with the light on to see the text, of course). But turning everything off and unplugging it all, I really started to realize how we, specifically, use power in our every day lives. I use energy to read a book! Ha.

For our Earth Hour, we took Bailey for a walk around the ponds in the courtyard. We laughed a bit at her quirky gait and her bouncing ears. After letting her "smell the roses" or rabbit tracks or whatever else she wanted to sniff, we went back to our apartment and chatted about the day and about camping. He and his buddy, Kory, had gone up camping a week or so ago, and now he's all psyched to take me up. We planned that a bit, and he showed me his camping gear. I learned about "efficient candles" and other such things. All in all, it was a pretty fun and informative hour.

At 8:30pm, our Earth Hour was officially over, but neither of us was that eager to start plugging everything back in again. To be honest, after a full hour with everything off, it almost felt like a waste to start using power. We did without for a bit longer, but when I wanted some tea, I had to turn on the kitchen lights. Then it was back to our computers. We plugged those back in and turned them on, and then we plugged our modem and router back in. All that to use our computers! Andrew then plugged back in the phone and answering machine. And, then, we were up and running once more.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5ixgRTaYipNi4_Xzk1RFhCdximrNA
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/metro/stories/2008/03/29/earthhour_0330.html