A quick story which reinvigorates my faith in humanity. My next-door neighbor stopped by today during poker night to drop off WARM banana nut bread! It was so fantastic! I was completely confused, until she explained that her (and her boyfriend) had just gotten a Great Dane puppy, which they were crate training. They were worried that the whining and yipping (the crate is apparently right against my wall) was bothering me. Honestly, I hadn't heard a peep (our walls are solid concrete). How totally considerate... so nice of her to do so. Yay for nice neighbors! (I should really try to be a better neighbor, too)

. . .

This could be the funniest thing I've done in the month of February (to date), and I'm not even sure how to explain it. I don't think it's funny to anybody but maybe 3 people in the whole world ... but it's worth sharing. So I'll give it a shot. It requires a bit of a backstory to understand.

I have a friend Jennifer (most of the anonymous comments making fun of me are usually her). We knew each other in college, but for some reason, we've ended up as good internet buddies. (She's a great designer - hire her!)

She has a friend she talks about ALL the time, beanya. (ODDLY enough, beanya actually knows Guerric - they went to high school and college together!) Eventually I threatened to steal beanya as an internet friend and started chatting with beanya - we're now Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook friends. Wooo, go false sense of intimacy - thanks, Internet!

Jennifer (who is getting married in June - congrats!) has constantly mentioned how she's going to enjoy how awkward I'll act around beanya when I finally meet her in real life. (In Jennifer's mind, I am the biggest social retard to walk the earth). To that end, I've been doing a great job of building up the suspense by doing things like e-asking beanya out and sending beanya the horrible Christmas cards.

And before you think I'm totally weird, yes, it's all a long, funny joke that everybody is aware of.

Jennifer mentioned how beanya hates flowers, which just BEGGED a little joke over Valentine's day. I would send this girl I don't know a sappy personal gift on the cheesiest holiday ever.

With Jennifer's help, we found:

That dog's name is "Sad Sam." I have no idea why a sad puppy should be associated with a bouquet. ANYHOOS.

So when ordering the gift, I could put in a 210 character message. I typed a message that fit EXACTLY into the space allowed: "Delilah played that K-Ci and Jojo Song, "All My Life" last night on the radio. It reminded me of those cold winter nights when we'd lay out on frozen Lake Michigan and just talk until the sun came up. I <3 you."

(What's incredibly sad is how quickly I was able to concoct that message - it took me all of two or three minutes.)

I set the delivery date for today (Thursday - in case she missed the delivery).

Fast forward to today (or rewind?).

I get a text message from Jennifer earlier today to haul my ass online because the flowers were delivered (I forwarded her the UPS tracking number).

Now, one thing I learned today is that unless you put your name in the message, they will *not* say who the flowers are from.

This caused some unintentional comedy. beanya was totally confused as to who sent the flowers, and Jennifer (who she was calling) was playing dumb (and probably doing her best to sow more confusion). This apparently caused a bit of commotion among beanya's roommates, who wanted to know who had sent the flowers.

The next step beanya and her roommates took was to call 1-800-flowers.com to try to figure out who sent them. But, 1-800-flowers.com would NOT budge on disclosing my privacy! How frustrating for them! (And glorious for Jennifer, who had first-row seats for the whole thing). What's even funnier is I later found out I had a voicemail FROM 1-800-flowers.com which I will try to post - basically the guy was trying to get me to give him permission to release my information.

Chaos ensues.

At this point, I'm half-way debating never disclosing that I sent them - the comedy which ensued is just too much. Everybody just seems to be having too much fun.

I finally reveal that I was behind the flowers by emailing the K-Ci and Jojo song to my personal friends' "song of the day" mailing list. beanya later gets online and yells at me after poker night (not really).

. . .

Now, the unintentional comedy is pretty funny. But my original intent (make things totally weird and awkward) is also starting to kick in.

beanya now has to explain to her roommates, who are all drawn into this mystery of the flowers and ugly dog, who sent them. And she simply can't.

The conversation apparently goes something like this: (relayed to me by beanya)

Roommates: "How'd you meet him?"
beanya: "I've never met him."
Roommates: "Uhh.."
beanya: "But I know what he looks like ... but I've never heard his voice!"
Roommates: "Uhm..."

It made beany's week (poor her, she's been sick!), and Jennifer got a huge kick out of it (Jennifer and beanya chatted on the phone to try to figure this out).

Annnnddd that was my Thursday.