Chocolate Birthday Cake

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You know yesterday was a strange day.  I had several things happen for the first time ever.  One event you may have heard of was the earthquake.  The epicenter is about 15 miles from my office in Spotsylvania County Virginia, a few miles from Fredericksburg.  I was standing in the front office talking to a co-worker when the building started to shake.  When it didn’t stop shaking, and started to shake harder, we knew it wasn’t the air conditioner or someone moving furniture.  It takes a few seconds to realize what is really happening.  It was very dramatic and intense and for a brief moment I wondered if someone had bombed our little town.  My boss ran into the front office telling everyone to evacuate the building that we were having an earthquake.  We knew it must have been an earthquake, but it’s almost like it wasn’t real.  It was shocking in a way.

We all got out of the building and once outside I could still feel the ground shaking.  We stayed outside for a while until they told us it was safe to go back in.  They decided to evacuate a second time due to some problems that our General Services department had to fix.  At this point they sent us home for the day to check on our own homes, children and animals.  My dogs and cat were fine and only had a few things fall and hit the floor.

If you’ve ever wondered how long 30 seconds can seem, a violent shaking earthquake will give you some idea.  The Lake Anna Nuclear Power Plant is very close to our home and we are in the evacuation area.  Lake Anna had problems when it was hit with the earthquake and immediately shut down.  The backup power did not come on and the second back up was started.  This could have been very bad.  That seems scarier than the earthquake itself.  Anyway that was a first.

Yesterday was also my birthday so it was the first day I was 52 years old.  I will always remember this birthday as the one day the earth shook.  The third thing that happened was I made a homemade chocolate birthday cake with homemade chocolate buttercream icing, and it was good.  If you’ve known me for any length of time you probably know that I don’t make good cakes.  I make pies.  Big difference!  There was that incident with the Red Velvet Cake that I’ve never lived down.  Since everything was ‘different’ yesterday I somehow found my baking mojo and whipped up my own birthday cake.  Maybe it was because the pressure was off.  Who’ll care if it doesn’t turn out good?  I won’t ruin someone’s birthday.  If my cake is dry and not edible, I won’t fret!  But wouldn’t you know it’s yummy!

I talked to many of my siblings, children and traveling husband yesterday too.  One of my brothers asked if it was Armageddon up here with Hurricane Irene heading this way for the weekend?  I said it does seem like a strange week so if this is the end, I think I’ll have more chocolate cake now.  What the heck!!  If this is the end, I’m going out with an upset stomach by golly!