got candles?

earth hour 2009
Originally uploaded by Julep67

It's almost April and the last week of classes is upon us. How did that happen anyway? Every academic year, the weeks just whiz by faster and faster for me.

On Saturday, in this part of the world, we had a gorgeous, actually warm day. We spent part of the day in the park with the dogs, part of it doing errands, part of it cleaning the van (inside and out) and part of it enjoying the yard. On Saturday, despite the really warm temperature, we still had a big chunk of ice in the back yard which prevented us from raking but I have a feeling we'll be able to get at it this weekend if it doesn't rain too much.

On Saturday night, much to the delight of the dogs, we once again participated in earth hour. Turning stuff off on a Saturday night, when we may normally be watching a movie, is challenging. However, that hour felt like nothing compared to yesterday. We had a crazy thunder/lightning storm yesterday morning. At 11:49 a.m., lightning hit a hydro pole at the end of our street. We saw the flash, heard the explosion and then heard our house get very quiet. It's always amazing to me how quiet the house is when all of the stuff stops whirring.

By 2 p.m., we were going a little stir crazy (I'd been doing housework and had gotten to the point where I'd done what I could do and now needed the vacuum and hot water to finish) so we went out to the store with the dogs. On the way home, we stopped at a fast food place for a late lunch (the dogs had some chicken - they really enjoyed that). By the time we got home, around 4 p.m., the power was back on.

Oh happy day! I could finish my housework and watch TV! After this weekend, I think we're going to try to do earth hour 'round our house a little more often. It doesn't hurt anything to do it, it actually saves us money and it can be fun (when it's a planned outage). The unplanned outages are not so fun but at least it was just a few hours. My post-traumatic-ice-storm-stress-disorder didn't quite rage into full swing yesterday so all's well that end's well!