Blessed

Today I have a lot to be thankful for.  Last night a pretty huge storm blew through the area.  There were wind gusts up to 80 mph and trees are down all over the place.  There are power outages from at least Wytheville to Richmond.  But not at Casa de Yopp!  All day long I've been getting more and more reminders of how blessed I am and how thankful I am for my world and my life. 

Friends
Last night I was sitting in Cookout, eating a burger and drinking a milkshake after having just seen "Magic Mike" with two of my best friends.  I'm thankful that I have wonderful friends who I can meet for movie and an unhealthy dinner on a Friday night.  I'm thankful that I had one of those friends in the car with me while I battled the elements and made my way from Lynchburg back to Roanoke.  Beth kept an eye on the radar map while I introduced her to the wonderful world of One Direction.

This morning Paul's best friend called to tell us that their power is out.  There are electric poles and trees down around his neighborhood and there's no estimate of when it's coming back, so their giving away everything in their freezer.  He invited us to come by and stock up on whatever we want.  They're giving everything away so it doesn't go bad, and it does my heart good to know that.

Electricity
Somehow we still have electricity.  It feels like business as usual around here.  I'm doing laundry and putting up blinds in the air conditioning, and it's hard to be annoyed by these chores when some people are sitting in sweltering heat.

Traffic Lights
A few minutes ago I drove to Paul's work to take him a cold jug of tea.  On the way there I noticed half the businesses I passed were out of power and the others were swarmed with people.  In general, the drive was pretty normal.  But when I left I realized I couldn't turn left where I needed to  because the traffic lights were out.  I ended up driving a pretty random route home because, getting around without traffic lights?  It's not easy.  It's actually pretty difficult.  So I took all right turns until I got to the interstate and could make my way home.

The Kindness of Strangers
When I was walking back to my car after taking Paul his tea, there was a woman walking across the parking lot holding a plate.  She asking me if I was going to Home Depot and I said no, that I was just visiting my husband.  She then gestured with her plate and told me that Home Depot was giving away pizza.  Home Depot was lucky enough to still have power and was giving pizza away to all the people who couldn't make their own lunch. I'm sure they'll make up for that cost with all the generators and chain saws that will be rolling out the doors this weekend.

Strong Trees
While a lot of people are spending their day cutting up fallen trees and dealing with insurance companies, we just have a some large twigs scattered around the yard and driveway.  About 4 houses a way a tree split down the middle.  I passed a house for sale that now has a tree laying on the roof.  There's also a huge tree by the library that fell on the power line and is being kept off Williamson Road by nothing but that power line. And all I have is a few twigs that I need to pick up. 

Summer Reading

I recently discovered the magic of reading at the gym.  A couple months ago I downloaded Chasing Mona Lisa by Tricia Goyer and Mike Yorkey to the Kindle app on my phone.  I've had the app since I got my phone over a year ago, but I'd only used it one time, to read a short story that was only released a an  ebook.  But when a facebook friend posted that Chasing Mona Lisa was free that day, I figured I'd give it a shot.  That day at the gym I pulled the book up on my phone and realized that I could increase the font so that I could read it without squinting.  After I finished that book I downloaded Sprig of Thyme by Jenna Dawlish (again, for free) and I finished it in just a week's worth of gym trips.  

I grew tired of the free options on Amazon and decided to check out my library's ebooks and now I'm obsessed. One day, through blogs and the library, I truly found magic.  

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It's safe to say that The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern is now one of my favorite books.  I truly felt like I was being transported to another world while I was reading.  I would love to give a synopsis of the book, but I don't think I could do it justice.  I will say that it's about a very special circus (obviously) and a competition.  And it has a wonderful cast of characters that I fell in love with.  I didn't  want the book to end and delayed finishing the book because I didn't didn't want to say goodbye to the characters.  I would recommend this books to anyone, especially anyone who has read and enjoyed Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs. Like Riggs' novel, The Night Circus is full of magical realism and it's easy to transition from one novel to the other since reality has already been somewhat suspended.  

The Night Circus is available in hardback, audiobook, and ebook form,  and will be released in paperback in July.  Do yourself a favor and pick it up.  

Having A Bad Day?

Don't worry about it.  Just watch this.

You're welcome.

I'm sorry Harvard baseball team, fun., and President Obama, but this is the best cover of "Call Me Maybe" in the whole wide world.

Safety First

You may or may not remember that Paul got me a shiny new bicycle for Christmas.  It' a cruiser bike and looks something like this, well, actually, it looks exactly like this.

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He picked this one because it's the same color as my stand mixer.  He correctly, figured that would be important to me.

Unfortunately, my pretty bicycle sat in the dining room until this past weekend.  I new Paul didn't think I liked it so I decided that it was time to get out an ride it.  About a block away from the house I remembered why it was that I hadn't ridden my bike yet.  I don't have a helmet.  I was feeling a little wobbly, since I hadn't ridden a bike since I was about 12, and decided that rather than wiping out and having a car come along and squish my head like a grape (my biggest, most irrational fear...we'll talk later), I'd head home. 

I began my search for a helmet thinking that it wouldn't be hard to find something both fun and functional, but I was wrong.  Everything I found looked very aerodynamic and like it belonged on Lance Armstrong, not on a girl out for a casual pedal around the neighborhood.  But then I found Yakkay.  The company is based in England and make helmets and helmet covers that are SO. SUPER. CUTE!!  they don't look like helmets.  They look like hats with chin straps.  Here are a couple of my favorites:

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Those would be excellent for a casual pedal around the block, AMIRIGHT?!  Unfortunately, they come at quite a price.  I found a company in Chicago that sells them stateside, but they're $124.  And as cute as they are, I just can't justify spending that much on something I'm only going to use every now and then.  And I can only imagine the look on Paul's face if I were to tell him that I have to spend $125 for something that I could pick up, albeit in a much less cute form, at Target. 

Do you know where I can get a cute bicycle helmet without breaking the bank?  How confident are you in my ability to figure out a way to make my own super-cute helmet cover?