seldear | Earth Hour

Last night, at 7:30pm, large portions of Sydney turned out their lights for one hour - including the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Sydney Opera House, Luna Park, and Centrepoint Tower, as well as many of the office blocks.

The initiative was begun to invite Sydneysiders to think about how they can reduce their energy usage - both for the sake of their pocket and for the sake of the environment.

My family had dinner at the parentals' and then turned out the lights and sat around and chatted by candlelight. We're a fairly eco-friendly household: front load washer, air-drying clothes, no air-conditioning, and recycling, but there's always ways to further think about how to live more simply.

I'm certainly not about to give up electricity (*hugs her laptop*) but I'm willing to look at changing the patterns of my behaviour to reduce my energy footprint. It's not an option for the time-poor, but it's an option for us, so we're doing it.

Sydney:

and after the lights went out:

They had to leave the streetlights on for safety reasons, and not everyone participated in Earth Hour, but quite a few did. So the change is pretty impressive.

--

Anecdotally, I got to the parentals' to discover that dinner wasn't going to be immediate. So I got on stepdad's computer to type up a snippet I'd just had come into my head.

My sister, upon finding me writing it: "So, you left the computer at home in an attempt not to use it, and ended up on the stepdad's computer instead?"

"I had a story idea come to me and I had to write it d--"

"All right, all right. Down with the plotbunny!"

*laughs*

My sisters know me too well.