Surprise!

I've decided recently that attempting some sort of surprise for my wife only ends up in her learning about it before it's supposed to happen. Right before Thanksgiving I had made reservations at a small bed and breakfast in the area for a suprise night out. The place called my cell to confirm, but I was in class so I called them back when I got home. Unfortunately, I had to leave a message then and told them to call back. They didn't call back of course until the next morning at 8 AM when I was still in bed and Melissa was getting ready for work. So, there went surprise number one (and it was so good!) Then, for Christmas this year we decided that we were only going to get one gift for each other, which, if you've ever done that, puts extra pressure on for finding that perfect gift. Well, I found my perfect gift and wrapped it up and threw the box for it in my trunk because the box would have given away what sort of thing the gift was. However, I quickly forgot that the box resided in my trunk, and on this past Sunday we were loading Christmas cookies to take to our small group, when I opened the trunk and beheld the loathsome box sitting right in plain view. It took me a few seconds to remember what the box was for, but soon I had that gut-wrenching feeling in my stomach and that utterly defeated look on my face. Melissa looked at the box, then at me, and then bust up laughing as I slammed the trunk shut. It wasn't too hard for her to miss the larger-than-life letters spelling out Zappos.com.

In other news, this past week started finals along with summoning the due date of several of my grad school applications. Needless to say, it has been stressful, but more tedious to fill out all of the applications (probably because I'm applying to nine schools!). My goal is to be done with all of them by Dec. 22 when we head up north to the frozen tundra for some holiday cheer with family for a week or so. I only actually have four left to do and endless amounts of freetime now that school's done so I'm not expecting any problems. It will be a great burden off of my shoulders once they are done.