Earth Hour

At 7:30pm on Saturday night we decided to participate in Earth Hour, at 8pm. After 25 minutes of peeling about 20 cubic metres of plastic off all our new candles, stabbing myself in the process, we had everything ready.
I used my kitchen blow torch to melt out old candles and melt the new (finally, a use for the damned thing!) into our multitude of holders and a few pewter goblets. We placed candles in each room and then commenced turning off the lights.
The first protest was from the 5 year old, who is scared of the dark, so she was allowed to keep her night light on.
The second protest was from the husband who insisted that the stereo was an essential appliance so the music remained.
The third protest was from the teenager who wanted to microwave his dinner - well I guess food is essential. So then finally I said "stuff it, I’m putting on a DVD!", microwaved my dinner then sat down to watch "Dexter".
An hour later we put a couple of lights on, then the electric heater and I sat and pondered on what we had achieved: we had generated a shopping bag full of (non-recycleable) rubbish from the candle wrappers, I was injured (small wound on my thumb), the teenager had used light from the fridge while cooking his dinner so the fridge would have been working overtime with the door wide open and we burned maybe $15 worth of candles.
I think we get a point for attempting to participate, but overall no points for accomplishment or dedication. Yeah well, we’re Goths - not hippies.
p.s. We recycle, compost, grow some of our own vegies and recycle grey water so we ain’t all bad.