Sunday, March 2, 2008

An Evening by Candlelight

I see that Christopher Tassava has already registered his disapproval of 90-minute evening blackouts that occur when important tasks need to be done. I fully acknowledge the aggravation or full-blown emergencies that such a situation is likely to create.

At our house, though, I must say I rather enjoyed at least the first half of the blackout. My son's home activities tend to revolve rather too much around the computer and the DVD player (my fault, I know), and I found it quite refreshing to find myself reading to him by the fading daylight, supplemented with a few candles. Soon we moved to the dining room table and filled a baking sheet with about a dozen votives and tealights so we could strain our eyes over some word-search puzzles in his latest Puzzlemania. I didn't think to capture the occasion on camera, and that feels somehow right; it was not a time for modern technology.

Despite the charm of candlelight, we were getting rather tired of the eyestrain and were starting to wonder if we should just pack it in and go to bed early when the lights and the TV flooded back on, and life returned to normal. I appreciated our chance of a small taste of the not-so-normal, though... and my son appreciated the chance to blow out all those candles.

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