Surprise Date!

So today started out really rough - I woke up at 7:15am absolutely exhausted, but reluctantly dragged myself out of bed, got dressed (nicely, because it was a work day), and plopped down on the couch with a bowl of Banana Nut Crunch cereal to do my morning devotional (courtesy of commonprayer.net).  Then, at 8:30, I dragged myself, my class bag, my lunch, and my work purse to my car, and drove to school.  When I got to campus, the classroom was over halfway filled, and there weren't any seats open around my friends, so I dragged myself to the extreme back left corner of the big lecture hall, dropped my stuff down, and then wandered over to the refectory in search of a cup of coffee, then took it back to the room (talking to a couple friends along the way).  Back in my corner of unintentional banishment, I sipped my coffee apathetically until, happily, my new friend Katrina appeared and came and sat by me.  An hour later, class was over, and I drove across town for work.

This is where the day took a turn for the better - after just an hour, my mentor pastor said the magic words, "OK, see you Sunday!"  He let me off work FOUR HOURS early!  Since I'm still new, there's not a great amount of work for me to do, so I got to go home instead!  I spent the afternoon attempting to take naps (which failed because of the massive caffeine quantities consumed in preparation of the long day I expected), doing a tiny amount of class reading, and generally lounging about.

The evening was definitely the best part of the day - my boyfriend Josh, recently returned from his trip to California, took me on a surprise date...I was rather nervous about this idea, because we've only been dating for two months, and it seems like surprises are still kind of risky this early in the relationship.  But, it was really, really great!  We ended up going to Pappadeaux, a cajun seafood restaurant in the West End, where Josh's dad's band was playing!  So we just got to kick back, eat some good seafood, and listen to great music and just laugh and enjoy ourselves.  It was truly a great night (and in case you were wondering, the band was truly very, very good.)

The funniest part of the night was when Josh and I, neither of us being super hungry and entrees being kind of pricey, decided to split the "Pappadeaux Platter", which is your typical fried seafood platter featuring fried tilapia, crawfish, shrimp, fries, stuffed shrimp, stuffed crab, and what have you.  Here's a picture of the meal that, mind you, we SPLIT:

Yeah.  Those two plates are ONE MEAL.  It was ridiculous.  I can only hope that Pappadeaux secretly intends for people to split that meal...even together, Josh and I only ate about half of it, and both took home leftovers (although, granted, my leftovers were mostly fries.  I know how to prioritize a seafood platter).

So anyway, it was a super fun night :)  Now tomorrow, I'm going into super homework mode - reading for three classes AND writing a paper, and hopefully maybe even trying to work ahead a bit.  But after a stressful week, tonight was a wonderful way to start the weekend :)

And now a gratuitous couple picture...because if nothing else, I know that the family who reads this blog is curious :-P