It all started soon after I came back from Nashville over the second weekend in January. It dawned on both of us that it would be six weeks before we saw one another again and it wasn't the most pleasant of thoughts. Noticing that V-Day fell just a month away, I began to think of a surprise and started looking for reasonably priced flights either to or from Texas so one of us could join the other. I settled on bringing her to San Antonio for a weekend, but I needed some help to make it happen.
First, she would need to leave work early. I've met Nancy, one of her co-workers, a few times and felt comfortable bringing her in on the scheme. I emailed Nancy and asked if she could leave work a few hours early on February 12 and if she could schedule a bogus meeting for that afternoon so she wouldn't plan to do any real work during that time. Nancy was all about it and quickly signed on.
Second, I needed to make sure Les didn't make other plans for the weekend to hang out with friends or go to a concert or something like that, so I emailed her mom, Vicki, and asked if she could pretend to be coming to Nashville that weekend so Leslie wouldn't make any other plans. She, too, was thrilled to help.
So, I booked her flight, found a hotel near downtown, made dinner reservations, and waited. Additionally, wanting to make the whole thing as romantic surprise-y as possible, I wrote a very elementary poem about Leslie coming to visit me on something that was supposed to look like a memo from Vanderbilt Medical Center.
Friday around 1:30, Nancy called Leslie and two others into her office for the meeting. For several minutes, Nancy proceeded to bombard Leslie with new assignments and Leslie graciously took them all on. Then, she handed out file folders with some sort of official business in them (I have to give all credit to Nancy here for wonderful theatrics). As Leslie began to read, she saw that it was not work-related. Her thought went from, "I'm not supposed to see this" to "who's writing Nancy poems?" to "that kinda looks like Jake's signature" to "this says J. Hill at the top" to "hey, this is for me!"
After she got the idea and Nancy explained what was going on, she headed home to pack with just a few hours before her flight. In the meantime, I was finishing a day of teaching and running some errands. A matter of hours later, I was waiting for her at the San Antonio airport and we commenced a wonderful weekend.
Saturday we had an early lunch at Los Barrios--home of the Puffy Taco throwdown with Bobby Flay and some unbelievable nachos. Then, we walked around downtown, the river walk, and did the audio tour of the Alamo (per the recommendation of my friend Steve). In the afternoon, we went book shopping and we spent some time in the early evening watching Lost and cheering on America at the Olympics before having a amazing dinner at Biga on the Banks, along the river.
My exceptional self-picture taking abilities.
Remember the Alamo!
The next morning we had a late breakfast at Madhatter's and did some more city strolling before I had to take her back to the airport.
Overall, it was a great time and an excellent prelude to the adventures to come less than a month from now visiting our friend Drew in Japan.
We'll keep you posted!
