March 28, 2009

Earth Hour

So thanks to my sister in law Jessica I have now become aware of a new special occurrence Earth Hour. This is kind of a last minute posting as it is 7:15 in KC and it begins at 8:30 but hey better late than never right? So the purpose of this hour is show that you care about energy conservation. You can do so by switching off your lights from 8:30 to 9:30 pm local time today March 28th. Sounds great to me!

This is new to me so I have to strategize and now I have questions about the whole thing.

1. Can I use my laptop if it is not plugged in. Probably, but to be true to the Earth Hour I probably shouldn't.

2. I will turn off my ceiling fans but the heat is definitely staying on. Sorry lots of snow and ice outside and I am a wimp. :-)

3. Can I talk on the phone during this time? I would think cell phones would be ok since they are already charged. But maybe this is not consistent to the point of energy conservation. The power in my battery came from somewhere.

4. Reading should be good but I will have to use candles to see. This kind of scares me after last summer when we lost power during a thunderstorm. I was at the end of a book I was reading so I could not stop. So to see I had to get really close to the candle and almost lit my book on fire. How did we do anything without electricity?

5. Other things we could do by candle light. Play games, talk, watch it snow outside, snuggle.

In addition to being beneficial to reducing and making us aware about our energy consumption maybe this earth hour also serves another function. Maybe "unplugging" for an hour is important for us to reconnect to those around us.

Happy Earth Hour to All!

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