Boom Boom, Out Go the Lights

OK, I'm 12 minutes into Earth Hour. My assumption is that the term "non-essential lights" does not include the computer - that's essential! The birds are tucked in, the dog is asleep in the middle of the bed, and the only light in the house besides my monitor is the pink flamingo in The Swamp.

I've written before about Laurilee Thompson and her Dixie Crossroads restaurant in Titusville. The exterior walls and some of the interior walls of her restaurant are covered with wildlife murals painted by Al Rao. I always envied those murals, so several years ago, I got Al to do the walls of my guest bedroom. We had just finished The Nature of Florida's Habitats digital photo album, featuring 120+ beautiful photos by Jim Angy, so I had lots of reference photos to use in planning the room. Al is one of those unforgettable characters you meet in life if you are really lucky - I treasure The Swamp and my kitchen walls (they are a whole other story that I'll tell you the next time the lights go out). My photos are not perfect, but I took them in the dark! Trust me - the murals are beauties.

I mentioned the murals are in the guest bedroom. The guest bed pulls down out of the closet. If you sleep with your feet in the closet, you wake up looking at a great white egret. Guests tend not to stay long.

Friend David called from Chicago, where he is attending a convention. I warned him about the lights, because Chicago is a major player in this Earth Hour project. I received a new Caribbean Conservation Newsletter this afternoon with a couple of statistics from 2008's Earth Hour: Chicago kept 840,000 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, and in Toronto, there was an 8.7% reduction in energy.

Earth Hour got good coverage on Yahoo! and in the newspapers, so it will be interesting to see how many people participated. I know Cactus Jack Splash will be observing the hour. Did you?