Summa Time!

Yesterday was the perfect summer day...the one I was waiting for. Summer has begun. The weather says otherwise, but that feeling is there. We spent all day yesterday at:


It was so relaxing. The weather was perfect, the vibe was right, and we spent much of the day laughing which is always needed. The festival is held right in a huge park by the beach, and it is just non stop music all day. Everybody is really welcoming and nice to each other, and it is a really great community event. The music is a little twangy, as a lot of the musicians are from Texas, but we all need a little twang in our lives every so often.

I came across this website recently called Help Others, and it is all about random acts of kindness. Basically you sign up, and they then send you these free "smile cards" that say something like "Smile, You've Just Been Tagged". For example, you are going through a drive thru, and you decide to pay for the car behind you. You then hand the cashier one of these cards, and then ask him/her to give it to the person, so that they can then "pay it forward". The website is run by anonymous people, and I think it's pretty effin great. I mean, especially in the kind of world we live in, where people are always rush rush rush, and barely take the time to smile at each other, I imagine it would improve your mood considerably to get one of those cards. It's almost a little bit silly, and I can imagine that some people would scoff at the idea, but below the surface of 1990s esque smiley faces on cards, it is just a really nice idea.
They list some random acts of kindness ideas on their website, and I thought these were pretty cool, and might brighter some one's day quite a lot. I mean, most times, it doesn't take much.

-tape the exact change needed to a vending machine
-pay for some one's order behind you in the driv thru line
-pay for some one's toll fee on the highway
-leave flowers in front of some one's house (although this might immediately be met with suspicion, and a continuing obsession about who the flowers were from, which might not be so much of a gift after all)
-leave a cd with some of your favourite songs in a random place (on a bus...on a bench). Leave a favourite book with a note!

...and the list goes on

The website just makes me happy. And yes I ordered some cards. As dumb as the cards themselves may be, I can't imagine anyone getting one and not smiling.

I don't have my cards yet, but last night at the Cicada Fest, I thought I would try out my first (well, not my first in my life, but my first since reading this website), random act of kindness. It seemed like an appropriate setting. Anyway, we had left over food/drink tickets, so on the way out I told the lady at the ticket desk to just give those tickets to whoever came up to buy them next. The lady was like "that's so nice!", and then was just all smiley. So not only was she happy, the person who got free tickets was probably also happy. Not the hugest or most exciting random act, but it shows just how easy it is to spread a little happy around.

I can't wait to get the cards, I"m gonna pass them out allll over town.