A Wife present?

Alright, so it has been a year since the celebration of the anniversary of my significant other's birth. This year the date fell on a Monday. I had to work. Flarg. That meant no pancakes. I wanted pancakes, even if I had to make them. Oh well. Off I go to work. Let me go back a day.

It is Sunday. I need to get the wife a present. I scored major brownie points last year by braving the estrogen laden ULTA. She still has some parfum. Damn. It will not be easy this year. I am constantly accused of not getting a "wife present." Whatever that means. So there I am, racking my brain for the gift idea. It is not coming. Crap. I've got family members asking what to get her. I tell them I'm not sure, get her an iTunes gift card. Can you see where I am going yet? No? Keep reading.

A few years ago I worked at Apple Computer. One fine year all of the employee's received a 1st Gen iPod Shuffle. Pretty cool. It worked for me for almost a year. I needed to upgrade though. I was able to procure an iPod Nano from Sandy Claws the next year. Sweet. A few months later I wanted the new and improved iPod Touch. Got it. Through each upgrade the old iPod got passed along to the wife. She never got her own brand new iPod.

On September 9, 2009, yes 09/09/09, Apple released a new iteration of their iPod Nano chock full of Appley goodness. It even came in several wonderful flavors. Skip ahead on the DVR of my life to the Sunday before the wife's birthday. Add in the fact that I have told people to get her an iTunes gift card and that proverbial light bulb started shining bright.

I loaded the sprog into the short bus and headed off to Best Buy. We went straight to the iPod counter and picked up the pink flavored iPod Nano. The sprog picked out some pretty nifty headphones.

I got home from work on Monday and got ready for dinner. This year we decided to deviate from our standard fodder and libations and traveled out to Roseville for some Ruby Tuesday's. Pretty tasty. The wife opens up the recycled gift bag and looks at me. In that moment I knew I did good. "My own iPod?" That's right honey, your own iPod. "Yay!" Excellent.

Now, I now that it was not diamonds, jewelry, parfum, or some other stuff; however, it was pink. That counts it as a wife present right?

30th and Graduation

Alright...so now I am 30. I walked across the stage to receive my diploma on Saturday even though I still have 1.2 classes left to take. Standing around for an hour in the bowels of Arco Arena was not much fun. Not to mention the fact that they must be trying to conserve energy because it felt like an oven. But oh well. I got up there with the rest of them and got my Alumni pin and then moved the tassel.

So I can now call myself a college graduate in the field of Criminal Justice Administration.

We had the post-grad party at my house with all my friends and immediate family. Thank you all for coming! All of the gifts will be put to good use. In fact, the biggest is being used right now! All of my parents and wife chipped in and got me an EeePC netbook. I then repartitioned the HD and installed Eeebuntu Linux on the other partition. Now I have a dual boot system! Even though I will be through with my Bachelor's classes soon I may continue on to get my Master's degree. Just a thought that I am still kicking around.