So according to the small explosion that took out my Twitter, earth hour was last night. 8:30 PM EST, the rumour says. Funny thing about it? I didn’t actually notice. Which, probably, is an improvement over before–when, rather intentionally, I noticed and explicitly cancelled it. This year, though, it completely and totally passed me by until I bothered looking at Twitter and the resulting explosion. Here’s the thing, though. Even while not noticing, I still managed to follow some of their rules. Dammit.
- Lights off? Yep–blind, so they wouldn’t do me a whole lotta good anyway.
- TV off? Let’s see. It was a spring training Saturday, baseball was in the afternoon and very likely online anyway, and I’m still swearing off hockey for this year–so that’s an enthusiastic yes. Nothing really all that entertaining on otherwise so why spend the money on electricity for a thing I’m not watching?
- … And that’ll be about where it stops.
For the record, here’s what I never do, and will never do, during earth hour.
- Heat off? It was hovering around the freezing point by the time earth hour apparently came around to say hello. I didn’t feel like a sweater. I’ll just be keeping the heat on, thanks much.
- Computers off? Sorry, no. I’ve still gotta get things done, even if it’s environmental preservation hour. Sorry. Besides–it’s only an hour. I’d of just killed the environment in some other way instead–like going for coffee. Or busing back to the old building to drop in on some friends–oh, wait. Nevermind.
- Delay using the oven, etc? Well, yes–but we had leftovers from a few days ago. So I was doing that anyway. Unfortunately, I probably lost points for using the microwave instead of the oven, but you’ll have that.
- Put off driving somewhere? Well, okay. Sure. We bused instead. Which… Well… Okay… Does about the same environmental damage on average as if they’d actually let me drive. So, er, scratch that one.
So. That’s how I up and didn’t exactly toe the line, and did so without even really noticing I was supposed to. Did the 2% of you or so who did something else enjoy it? I did. And I wasn’t even trying.