Last night I was out of place and my mind was running at a million miles a second.  You see, I'd had a few personal things go wrong and I wasn't able to go home and sleep in my bed for the night.

So I wasted as much time as I possible could in the office trying to delay the inevitable--where would I lie for the evening.

I surfed the internet until I hit the page that said "You've reached the end of the internet--now go outside and play."  Finally, I found a friend who could put me up for the night.

When I got there, I was laying on her couch watching TV.  I started drifting off... semi thinking about my life and responsibilities and semi listening to the news.  I was thinking about my family, my work, why I'd spent so much on my Capital Two card, why I'm an over achiever but an under doer... suddenly I heard the news say that last night the Eiffel Tower had turned off lights for 5 minutes (and some Parisians had joined in solidarity) to raise awareness about energy conservation and global warming.  Rome and Athens did the same with a couple of their national landmarks.

So I was laying there thinking about all the useless energy I'd consumed today.

Woke up, turned on all the lights in the house...

Went to work, ran the air filter and my under-the-desk-heater to keep my feet warm (even when I was hot and even when I went out for lunch).

Stayed 3 hours after work closing time and surfed online pointlessly--on my desktop and my laptop.

Laying on my friend's couch... almost asleep with the TV on and I'm not really watching.

So I thought, maybe we can do something like this across the country.  Okay, maybe that's wishful thinking.  Why not California.  We're environmentally savvy people.  But instead of lights off for one night for 5 minutes, why don't we do lights off for 10 minutes for 10 days.

When I say lights out I mean TVs, lights, computers, anything electric really (minus your alarm clock, I imagine).

I say we start on March 20th (to mark the beginning of the Vernal Equinox for new beginnings) and end on March 29th at 7pm each night.

What do you think?  I think we can do it!  We can launch a campaign in 6 weeks!  I really think this will be great.  Maybe we can get the state to tell us how much energy was saved.  How much money we saved as a state.   

I haven't thought this through as much as I should have but I really wanted to find out what you all thought.  Do you think a 10 Minutes 10 Days Lights Out campaign will work? 

Maybe I'm just crazy.