Earth Hour, Transient Snow

Saturday, my wife and I "kind of" participated in Earth Hour. When I say "kind of", I mean that we turned off almost everything in the place, even the clothes dryer that was running. We didn't unplug anything and the server farm stayed up. All the computer monitors and our laptops were already shut down, though.


My wife and I decided to read Bible passages aloud by candle-light for an hour. To that measure, we had a lot of candles going. This shows most of them, which provided enough light in our living room to read by. I'm not sure how much carbon we really saved. Those servers probably slurped up a good chunk, and I know all these candles weren't helping too much. Thank goodness I'm not a totally crazed eco-zealot. That's not to say I don't believe in respect and stewardship for what we've all been given to share with one another -- past, present and future.


Saturday also brought with it quite a few inches of freezing rain and snow. This was a bizarre, transient storm that dumped on us all day. Sunday and into today, warm, strong south winds and clear skies cooked almost all of the precipitation away. It was very strange to go out yesterday afternoon to see the pavement steaming with dry patches, wet spots, water rushing to the storm drains, and huge piles of plowed snow all at the same time, just 12 hours after the storm came to an end. The pavement was dry except for a few spots this morning. All that was left of the plowed roadside mess was a thin trail of slushy road grime. All but the biggest parking-lot piles will probably be gone by the time I leave work.


I did have to fight a head/crosswind with gusts up to 25 MPH on the way to the bus this morning. I personally find the combination of head and crosswinds to be the most loathsome of all kinds of wind. When you've got the opportunity to take the lane like I do on Quivira in the morning, it's not too big of a problem. If you find yourself having to share a lane (including the use of a bike lane), this kind of wind will either try to curb you or throw you in front of a vehicle. That's not my idea of a good time, and it's a good reason to keep your bike out in the middle of the road, where hopefully you'll make the point that motorists should change lanes to go around. If they don't, at least you've got a whole bunch of room to your right.

Random Tunage:
Crystal Method - Blowout
Prodigy - Firestarter